Science Astronomy

We were headed off into our Astronomy unit - our final unit of the year! But first we had to check on our crystallization experiments.

I had made up solutions of salt, sugar and epsom salts and had the kids drop them onto black paper. Alas, my paper wasn't cheap enough, so it didn't absorb the solution very well and the kids couldn't take home their papers that day. On the other hand, the crystals which eventually formed were larger and more perfect.

We looked at them with magnifying glasses.


The next experiment was with a salty solution. We divided it into two pots. One we boiled away the water causing the crystals to form quickly and rather haphazardly.

The other formed large square crystals as the water evaporated over the course of two weeks.



Lastly, I was trying for rock candy. I have never managed this well, so I tried the Joy of Cooking. I had always shunned that recipe because it asks you to boil the syrup til the hard crack stage which I had always thought would solidify like stone.

When I finally thought to check the progress, it had indeed set solid, so I did a second try with only boiling til the sugar dissolved. Unfortunately, it was less than a week so we got some crystallization, but nothing big or fancy.
Oh well! They had fun eating the crystals that did form and Oob licked up a lot of the syrup!

So we moved on to Astronomy.

I took the kids outside and had them move as much as they could and then be as still as they could.

Than I asked them if they were still moving. Trick question! The stillest thing on the planet is still spinning with the Earth at about 1000 mph!

And then we started talking about the Earth's orbit (about 67, 000 mph).

And then we talked about the Sun's orbit (486,000 mph) ... around the Milky Way! I must admit, everyone but the Zoomlians looked highly skeptical about this one.

Next we tried some orbiting. Here we have Choclo as the Sun with the other kids as the different planets (I'm glad they kicked out Pluto, I wouldn't have had enough kids!). I lined them up and then started them orbiting.

After a little while, I stopped them and asked what they had noticed. They had figured out that the closer planets make more orbits than the farther ones.

We talked a bit about what was in the solar system (sun, planets, dwarf planets, astroids, moons, comets, Kuiper belt) and what wasn't (constellations, black holes), then it was back to orbiting.

I had one kid as the sun, spinning in place and moving slowly, Klenda as the Earth orbiting the sun (I didn't have the nerve to have her spin) and Zorg as the moon, tidally locked, orbiting the Earth. This is hilarious to watch! I highly recommend it as a party game. They actually did really really well until the sun started moving too quickly!

That was it for this lesson, so the kids made up a game which was like tag except the person who was it was a black hole and all the other players were stellar objects (red giants, brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, purple and yellow dwarfs (also known as a smart aleck).

I got my favorite compliment at the end of the lesson: "That's it? That was only 5 minutes!"