From: Raleigh McLemore (raleighmclemore@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Apr 30 2004 - 13:14:15 PDT
Message-ID: <20040430201415.34693.qmail@web40209.mail.yahoo.com> Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 13:14:15 -0700 (PDT) From: Raleigh McLemore <raleighmclemore@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: pinhole Astronomy Field Trips??
Field trips to the planets take too much time, but
visiting the Sun works, only you have to go there at
night.
More of outside activity than a "field trip" I have
found sun activities to be really fun. Things like
sun-dials, viewing the image of the sun as it falls
through the trees on a piece of paper, or borrowing a
Sun Spotter solar viewer from places like the Space
Sciences Lab at UC Berkeley have gotten lots of good
discussion going. Oddly enough, the sundial seemed to
intrigue my fifth graders to no end. I felt a small
satisfaction when, using Starry Night software to show
where the planets are during the day, one of my
students pointed towards the sun and announced that
"Mercury" would be pretty close to the sun. A small
acknowledgement that Mercury was a real place and not
a memorized word, first one to say after you say
"Sun".
Besides Chabot (which was showing a great IMAX show on
the subject of "powers of ten" called, I think, "The
Cosmic Voyage), but just as difficult to get there, is
the Lawrence Hall of Science, catch the planetarium
show and see their "Forces of the Bay" exhibit.
If you are near a tall building or structure maybe you
could find a shadow point that moves rapidly as the
Earth spins and you could use that to describe some of
the motion that is happening.
More ideas for the teaching part are available in "The
Universe at Your Fingertips" from Ast. Society of the
Pacific.
Again, not a field trip, but if you train at NASA for
one workshop, you can check out real moon rocks and
meteor samples. Honestly though I think I was a lot
more impressed with holding them than my students who
observed, well, "rocks. Little gray ones, oh, and some
dirt too. Rocks and dirt". Hmmm.
With firm handshake,
Raleigh
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