• Aug. 29, 2007
Learning Astronomy
For science this year we've been using Exploring Creation with Astronomy by Jeannie Fulbright. So far it's been a blast. We are particularly enjoying Chapter 2 about the Sun. Yesterday we did a scale model of the distances of planets from the sun. This came from the Home Science Adventures kit. We had flags representing all of the planets plus the sun and moon. Starting with the Sun, each step we took represented 30 million miles. By the time we got to Pluto (not called a planet anymore), we were totally out of our yard and into the neighbors. Pluto is 3.7 BILLION miles away from the Sun! That's amazing! Earth was only 3 steps away from the Sun. And at this scale, the moon was only a finger's width from Earth. It's pretty eye-opening to think of the vastness of what God's created.
This is Taylor standing next to Pluto.
Today in Science we were learning about the difference between revolve and rotate. I wish I had a picture. We set a chair in the middle of the living room to be the sun. We would have used Isaac, but the sun is not supposed to move.
John got to be the earth that revolved around the sun. Then Taylor joined in as the moon that revolves around the earth while the earth revolves around the sun. It makes my head spin just thinking about it.
Speaking of spinning, we also had to add rotate into the fun. Needless to say, it was a mess. Just think, that's what's going on in the universe all the time. Nobody but God could set something like that into motion.
