Each Mission that Ray organizes is 3 hours of packed science
fun for the AstroNuts. The children range in age from 9 to 14 years. Mission #60 was held on October 25, 2015.
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| Scientist Stan's baskets prepared for his workshop |
At 2:00 pm, Ray welcomes the group and makes a few
announcements. Sometimes his son Brett makes the announcements.
At 2:15 pm Tim Harris updates the kids in the latest
technological developments in his “What’s Up in Space” news reel that he
creates himself.
At 2:30 pm, Astronomer Paul Delaney gave a brief talk about ”What’s
Up With Being Down With Gravity” indoors.
The group goes outside to the back, grassy area of a school
yard. Paul has designed two scale version activities using rope laid down
almost the length of the field. He places one student at the start of the rope
which is the Big Bang Theory, and assigns positions on a cosmological scale to
modern humans. Students are placed at each point with a picture and a title of
the period. The children get to visually see how short a period of time that
humans have been present on this scale.
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| Assembling the control surfaces that will control roll, pitch and yaw |
Paul’s second activity is to place the planets in order from
that closest to the Sun to the eighth planet Neptune being the farthest. This visual is very impressive.
At 3:30 pm we have the world famous, 15 minute Pizza Pizza
break.
At 3:45pm, it is time to do my activity. I taught the
children how to make a simple delta wing balsawood glider with control
surfaces. Once built, the children took their planes outside and under Ray’s
direction, flew them.
At 4:15 pm, Scott Sutherland showed pictures of various nebulae for his
theme “Halloween in the Cosmos” also termed, ”Scary Stuff in Space.”
The children were delighted with all the activities as the
program concluded promptly at 5:00 pm.
What a great way to spend a Sunday.
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