RALEIGH — If you're getting a little bored surfing the Web, don't give up. There are lots of "way cool" Web sites to visit.

New ones pop up every day and many are entertaining as well as educational. WRAL technology reporter Tom Lawrence surfed around several.

Optical illusions are the mainstay ofIllusionWorks.You need Java and Shockwave for most all the sites Tom visited. Both are free on the Web.

The site from theAmerican Museum of Natural Historyin New York shows how almost everything -- from butterflies to climate -- works together in our dependent world. You'll find it all here.

NASA has several web sites; Tom surfed one dedicated to thespace station. There's a movie of the rollout of the first module of the space station. It happens to be Russian.

The neatest parts of the site are the 3D images you download and then manipulate with your mouse. You can download the software you'll need to do it free.

Raleigh's soon-to-be-openExploris Museumalready has a Web site. You can get progress reports here and learn what Exploris is all about. A time lapse movie shows what the building looked like as it went up.

Explore Scienceis a great place for young students. The interactive pages illustrate how lots of things work. For instance, using your mouse you, you can see how changes in lenses affect refraction of light.

Another graphic shows how a golf ball is affected by air, angle of the club and velocity.

Happy surfing!