What's going on in the Sun??

We used the bumble ball to model the random walk of photons in the Sun. We wanted to know how the photons get from the Sun's core and "escape" as light. There is a GEMS question/answer site which explores this phenomena. I also found an online lab..

I don't know how I would use this with my students, but I think using the modeling with real science and introducing it to young students is a way to circumvent misconceptions and help students explore complex investigations of natural phenomena while they are in the intense questioning phase of their development.

We did and will continue to do Solar Exploration and this will develop student based/authentic scientific inquiry and investigations.

What's going on in the Sun??

We used the bumble ball to model the random walk of photons in the Sun. We wanted to know how the photons get from the Sun's core and "escape" as light. There is a GEMS question/answer site which explores this phenomena. I also found an online lab..

I don't know how I would use this with my students, but I think using the modeling with real science and introducing it to young students is a way to circumvent misconceptions and help students explore complex investigations of natural phenomena while they are in the intense questioning phase of their development.

We did and will continue to do Solar Exploration and this will develop student based/authentic scientific inquiry and investigations.

The Night at the Bean...

Our own Millenium Park in Chicago has a great optic experience, Cloud Gate , better known as the bean. The class visited the park and did some night observation and used some random optic equipment to design our own optics experience. My group used two convex lenses to make a rudimentary refraction telescope.

On an earlier visit to the bean...

Sun Observation

Don't know what to do during morning recess duty? Try some Solar Observing, I did! :) We used the Solar Shield we made in class.

On November 8, 2006 I was able to view the Mercury Transit through my 4.5 Orion Firstscope Telescope fitted with a Solar Filter. It was cool to view the Sun, I've wanted to do Solar Observation for a long time and this gave me an excuse to get the filter, although I admit that it was hard to see Mercury , but easy to see the big Sunspot. I used my CanonA75 to capture my telescopic view. If you look at the upper middle of the Sun you can see Mercury's shadow. The big dot in the upper right is the Sun spot. These photos range from 3:00- 5:00 pm.

The Exploratorium has a great clip on their website.

StarLab and Orientation/Navigation by Polaris

We were able to go into the StarLab portable planetarium with guest lecturer,Chuck Bueter from the Great Lakes Planetarium Association. Chuck also maintains the Paper Plate Education Web Site. We used our planispheres and the Latitude by Polaris devices before we went into the planetarium.

We built a student friendly "platisphere" with the Big Dipper, 2 stars from the Little Dipper, Polaris and Cassiopeia to help us find "North".