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Hi Irene, some lovely ideas about the way the kids can capture and record their observations. Offers huge scope for different class groups. And it’s applicable to many of the other discussions on the forum.
Hi Irene, thanks for the space fact and welcome to the forum. The fact opens up many possibilities for discussion and some ideas are already on the forum.
Hi Marcella, welcome and thanks for that new space fact. You can ask your class to see if they can see different colours in stars at night. Encourage them to give their eyes 10 minutes to adapt to the dark – definitely no phones or other artificial light as these destroy your night vision. And then just look up and record what they see. It is often cloudy in Ireland as we all know, but you can get the children to record that, so it’s not a waste of time. And ask them why they think you can’t see stars through clouds, or if they try to look through a sheet of paper, a window, some cellophane, etc. This allows them to predict, observe, record and reflect on how light interacts with materials around them.
Welcome to the forum Ciara! A great space fact. You could ask the class how many stars they think they can see at night. Surprisingly the number is only about 2500. If that’s the case you could discuss how with telescopes we can see fainter and fainter stars, which opens a discussion about distance and how things appear smaller (and fainter) the farther away they are. You can also ask the kids if they look at stars at night if they see any differences (e.g., some stars look blue, some a bit redder).
Welcome Sarah! Your fun fact is a great example that the Earth is not the biggest object in the universe. There are other comparisons you can make between the earth and sun. For example, you can ask if the sun is hotter or colder than the earth – with all the heatwaves across Europe, does this mean the Earth is as hot as the Sun? How many times hotter do they think the sun is? You can also discuss how the Sun is the source of all renewable energy on earth (except for nuclear!), including wind and solar PV and even dams (which rely on the sun to evaporate water and generate clouds which eventually fill rivers that fill dams).
Hi Sarah, great to have you on the forum. Thanks for the science fact which itself provides opportunities to ask the children to do comparisons of colours. Is the Earth’s sky always blue – what about sunset or sunrise? What do they think the colour of the sky is on the moon? (Without an atmosphere it’s black, all the time, lunar day and lunar night.)
Welcome Caitriona. This is a popular and impressive space fact on the forum. You could ask the kids to put a list of the length of days on different planets in their order from big to small. And see where earth sits in that list! Nice lesson here: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/days/en/
Hi Fiona, you’ve definitely come to the right place for inspiration about space from teachers, as you can already see. The Great Red Spot is also huge (about 16,000km across) and you could ask the kids to compare this with a typical hurricane on earth (about 1000km across).
Welcome Tanya! Great science fact. Kids can do this at home and see for themselves which way the water drains when a sink is emptied. They can also swish it with their hand in the opposite direction to see if they can reverse the direction of emptying. It can be done! This is an example of a bigger force – your hand – overcoming a smaller force – the rotation of the Earth.
Hi Siobhan, thanks for that fact. It truly is amazing to think nothing might be happening over millions of years to those footprints. You can ask your class if they think they can see footprints on the Moon from Earth and do an experiment to see just how far away you CAN see footprints. The craters on the Moon have been there for millions, sometimes billions, of years and we can see them from Earth! It’s like looking back in time – the Moon’s surface is like a snapshot from millions and billions of years ago.
Welcome Siobhan. That’s a really interesting fact. The nearest star is 4.2 light years away, so how long would it take Voyager to reach it if it travels one light minute in 50 years. This is a good example of how vast the Universe is.
Hi Mairead, thanks for the fun fact about Venus. And if you were on Venus and could see the Sun (which you can’t, because it’s permanently covered in thick cloud) you would see it take 58.5 earth days for the Sun to rise in the West and set in the East. Can the class imagine such a long day? How would that affect humans. Can we stay awake for 58.5 earth days? If school started in the morning and ended at lunchtime, that would be about 20 Earth days! And every night on Venus would be 58.5 earth nights!
Amazingly, Venus rotates in the opposite direction to Earth. Only Uranus does that also. Hence the Sun rises in the West, not the east.
Hi Jessica, a great fun fact. And your water activity sounds like a lot of fun (and messy!). You could ask the kids if they think there could be clouds in space, or on the Moon. Do they think there’s water in space and on the Moon and if not can there be clouds? NASA’s Curiosity Rover has captured images of clouds on Mars. (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-curiosity-rover-captures-shining-clouds-on-mars/ ) What does that tell us about whether there’s water on Mars. Do the clouds look thin or thick? What does that tell us?
Hi Michaela, welcome and thanks for that amazing fact. The Universe is truly bizarre when compared to what happens on Earth. We’ve had facts about the number of stars in the universe compared to grains of sand on beaches (which enables the discussion of just how big numbers can get and how we can try to visualize them); the number of earths that would fit into the Sun (which enables a discussion on relative sizes and perhaps volume differences); and now your neutron star fact (which enables a conversation about how heavy things can get and the idea also of density, which comes into all of the lessons related to floating and sinking).
Your lander idea offers a huge range of options. It certainly has open ended possibilities, prediction, experimentation and reflection. Check out also how this can be done with eggs. https://www.spaceweek.ie/events/eggstronauts-workshop/