March 13, 2009

Hello Students and Parents!

We kicked it into high gear over the last half of this week, and our Space reports are done. We had a lot of debates: can nebulae be the beginning of stars and the end of stars? Can asteroids hit the sun? Why are some of our planets gas planets instead of rock planets, and what's the real story with Pluto? Are those really methane lakes that you see on Titan? Wow. (see on Youtube the NASA video of the Hyugens probe landing on Saturn's moon, Titan, in 2005!) Do all stars turn into black holes, or is it just the big ones? And, by the way, why can't you see black holes?

Take a look at the slide show on the sidebar. It shows building the planets to scale, then spreading them out (to scale) along a one-fourth-mile walk we took from Pluto (near the classroom) to the Sun (in the field above the playground). On the last slide, Juliet is in the foreground holding the Earth, while everyone else is lined up, holding a 100-meter rope to represent the corresponding diameter of the Sun. It was cold enough to feel like we were in deep space.

Everyone's looking forward to the Green Breakfast/Open House next Tuesday. We'll be posting all of the Space Reports on our Bolger Class website too -- in case you're not able to make the Open House.

Take Care, Everyone.

Mr. Bolger and the Class