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
Friday, March 13, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Class Newsletter
March 2nd, 2009
Welcome back, everyone! We have a busy March ahead of us. We have updated our Calliope Webpage Calendar.
We have also been working hard on our space research. We learned, for example, that Ally can jump six inches here in the classroom, but she would be able to jump 3 feet into the "air" on the moon. We are studying everything from black holes to exploding stars to nebulae. We can't wait to show it all to you at the Green Breakfast. Next week, we'll post a slide show of us building planets. If Mercury is the size of a marble, and the Earth is the size of a softball, we realized that Jupiter would have to be a whole meter in diameter. We still haven't finished making Jupiter yet.
-- And if Jupiter had the diameter of a yardstick, how wide do you think the sun would be? You're going to be amazed. Do some research and tell us at the Green Breakfast!
Welcome back, everyone! We have a busy March ahead of us. We have updated our Calliope Webpage Calendar.
We have also been working hard on our space research. We learned, for example, that Ally can jump six inches here in the classroom, but she would be able to jump 3 feet into the "air" on the moon. We are studying everything from black holes to exploding stars to nebulae. We can't wait to show it all to you at the Green Breakfast. Next week, we'll post a slide show of us building planets. If Mercury is the size of a marble, and the Earth is the size of a softball, we realized that Jupiter would have to be a whole meter in diameter. We still haven't finished making Jupiter yet.
-- And if Jupiter had the diameter of a yardstick, how wide do you think the sun would be? You're going to be amazed. Do some research and tell us at the Green Breakfast!
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