ASTRONOMY FUN!!

So, we began astronomy with a book called Exploring Creation with Astronomy, graciously loaned to us for the summer by a leader at our co-op. At left, our first experiment. The point of the experiment was to learn that the planets are different sizes in relation
to one another. We tried to follow the instructions for the experiment and we were close, but the boys really did get to understand that some planets are larger / smaller than others. They were amazed that Earth was not the largest planet and that the last four planets of the solar system are the largest, which was their own independent observation, of which I am most proud!! Oh, just FYI, the first balloon is to represent the sun, then come Mercury, Venus, etc.
Here is our sweet Carter with the experiment from Chapter 2 of our Astronomy book. We were discussing the sun. This experiment used a magnifying glass, which is not seen clearly in the picture to focus the sun's rays on a small part of chocolate candy. We then compared how quickly the part of the chocolate candy that had the focused rays melted in comparison to the other pieces that did not have the focused rays. Of course, nothing is better than melted chocolate, so we cleaned the plate when our experiment was complete! By the way, Carter went to the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum for camp during this week, so all science was done with this green soldier's hat from World War II on his head! Carter got to take his own camera to the museum for camp
and hopefully those pictures will be on here soon!

In this experiment, we focused the sun's rays on a small part of the first piece of chocolate and it melted VERY quickly. We then focused the sun's rays over a slightly larger part of the second piece of chocolate and it melted quickly, but not as fast at the first piece. Finally, we focused the sun's rays on an even larger part of the third piece of chocolate and it took it a noticeably longer time to melt. The point of this portion of the experiment was to show that the more focused (smaller) the sun's rays, the hotter the point of light! Once again, we cleaned our mess by licking our plates! I love science!