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Hi Orla and welcome. That’s a great fun fact and you’ve also recognised that although sound doesn’t travel in the vacuum of space (as it needs some medium such as a gas or a liquid or a solid to do so) there are other ways to communicate. Electromagnetic waves (e.g., light) is one, as are plasma waves and magnetic fields, though these latter two are more tricky ways to communicate. And you’re right that we can convert signals from one form (light, plasma, magnetic fields) into other types of signals including sound. Check out https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/multimedia/sonifications/ and
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2024/12/See_and_hear_three_years_of_solar_fireworks
Hi Marie, don’t worry if children pose taxing questions. If you don’t know the answer you can always explore the answer together with them. Imagine you’re a group of explorers. How might they think they could go about finding out the answer. Are there different suggestions? Is there general agreement or many different views on which suggestions might be the most accurate. What would they need to measure or observe to help answer their question. I have found that even when you do know the answer it’s good to enable some discussion first, sometimes with prompts that help guide the kids. Taxing questions are part of living in a hugely and hugely complex universe, and that’s fascinating!
Hi Darren, very interesting to know you’ve seen Brian Cox several times. Some of the concepts he discusses are challenging, so you’re not alone in feeling that. The fact that you went a few times underlines that you don’t need to understand everything about a subject to be interested in it and that’s a lesson you can take into your classroom. Your fun space fact emphasises just how big the space between the planets is, compared to the size of the planets. There’s a nice lesson we developed at Blackrock Castle Observatory and which is available on the ESERO website which looks at scale in the solar system https://esero.ie/resources/our-solar-system/
Hi Mary, thanks for this original lesson. Lots of inquiry-based learning to be had from it and I think the kids would love it.
Hi Aoife and Jacob. Great to see slightly different approaches which nevertheless fundamentally use falling objects as the basis for the predictions, the observations and the discussion. An excellent example of the power of sharing ideas and creative thinking.
Thanks for those fun facts Rachel. The work of Newton and Kepler was made possible by the observations of Tycho Brahe, a colourful individual who had a gold nose and kept a pet elk, but who was also one of the greatest observational astronomers of all time. His meticulous observations of the planets enabled Newton and Kepler to challenge the theory that the earth was at the centre of the universe.
Welcome to the forum Mary. These are two very different fun facts and I’m delighted you’ve found the forum already to be beneficial.
Hi Rachel, and I’m not sure if this is discussed elsewhere, but you can also ask the class to scrunch up a paper sheet (i) a little, (ii) a little bit more and (iii) a lot more …. and see what happens. Does it still take the same time to fall from a given height? How can the same material fall at different speeds? It’s an opportunity to get the class to think about shapes, as you say.
Welcome Emer and great to have you on the forum. Distances are truly vast in the universe, so your fun fact is a great example of this. And you can reinforce what 8 minutes and 20 seconds of light travel time means, by asking questions such as how long it might take to walk between here and the sun, or drive perhaps. The next nearest star to earth, Proxima Centauri, would take 4.2 YEARS to reach. To travel across the Milky Way galaxy would take 100,000 YEARS. But there are also galaxies that would take BILLIONS of years to reach, even at the speed of light.
Hi Sarah. Those are very useful prompt words. Space is a bit of a conundrum … as you say it’s empty, but also full. This is a nice concept to discuss. It’s also dark and light. You could have fun exploring how these words have meaning and acuracy, even though they seem to be saying different things.
Welcome Sean and thanks for the fun space fact. Venus is a very popular planet on the forum! One of the nice things about investigating the Moon is that the kids can use pictures, but also see the changes themselves. While investigating the phases you can ask them to describe what they see on the lunar surface (e.g., craters of various sizes and even shapes, some areas are “rough” and some are “smooth”). Does the Moon look like the Earth, what are the differences and what might cause them? (The moon has no atmosphere and very little water and no volcanic activity – all of these help shape the earth and make it look very different.)
Hi Hannah, identifying a mystery planet on the basis of clues about it is a great lesson and very much encourages all the behaviours you outline.
Welcome Hannah, and thanks for that fun space fact. And it’s interesting that daytime sky colour is a kind of salmon pink. One thing you can ask the children if they have ever seen a blue sky or a red sky and when (e.g., red skies are usually morning or evening on Earth).
Hi Dolores, lovely to have you on the forum. In Greek mythology, Venus was referred to as the goddess of love, beauty and compassion. While that may be true of Venus as a goddess, it’s definitely a different story when you look at just how harsh the planet is, possibly the most hostile planet in the solar system.
Hi Dolores, lovely to have you on the forum. In Greek mythology, Venus was referred to as the goddess of love, beauty and compassion. While that may be true of Venus as a goddess, it’s definitely a different story when you look at just how harsh the planet is, possibly the most hostile planet in the solar system.