When I was in sixth grade, I got my first exposure to the wonders of astronomy. This was at a time in my life when my grandfather lived with my family and he, being an avid fan of both astronomy and education, did his best to nurture my interest in the subject. With his help, I created the first educational craft piece that I can remember.
We took a paper towel roll and strung a long strand of yarn through the middle. At the end of the yarn, we tied a washer as a weight. We then cut a piece of card stock into a half circle and taped that to the bottom of the paper towel roll. This was used over the course of a month to measure the movement of the night sky.
↑ Cheap and dirty picture model ^.^ ↑
We picked out a star that we could always find and recognize (in our case, it was the middle star in the handle of Ursa Major, the Big Dipper). The first night, we looked through the tube directly at that star. Because of the weight of the washer on the yarn, the strand of yarn pointed at the ground. With the paper towel tube pointing up at the star, the yarn was at an angle to the tube. We marked the card stock at the bottom of the tube with the date and time.
Each week, at the same date and time, we went out and looked at the star through the tube again. Each night that we did so, we marked the angle of the yarn on the card stock. At the end of the month, we were able to track how high the star moved in that month by looking at the markings on the card stock.
Though this was by no means a scientific experiment (it wasn’t exact measurements and didn’t account for horizontal movement), it was a lot of fun and it peaked my interest in astronomy.
A few years later, that same grandfather gifted me with a telescope so that I could track the stars for real. That same year, I created my second piece of astronomy craft – a solar system mobile. This was, rather pathetically (though creatively), made with the use of yarn, chopsticks, Styrofoam balls, paint, pins, and pipe-cleaners. It was another fun project, as I carefully painted each ball to match the diagram of the planets as they were shown on one of my planetary documentary cds.
It has been quite a while since I’ve kept up on astronomy the way that I did as a child, but every once in a while I still see something that peeks my interest or makes me reminisce. I still love all astronomy artwork (and there are quite a few paintings out there with astronomy themes). What tweaked my interest and sent me down this trip to memory lane was another solar system mobile.
This weekend, I finally found the time to assemble, paint, and hang a mobile that I bought a few months ago. It was quite a bit of fun to put together. The mobile even included the exact measurement distance that each planet should hang from the sun and a packet with some other astronomy information in it. There were a few disappointments with it - like the lack of rings on Uranus, which we now know has rings. Another disappointment was the lack of Pluto, but that isn’t their fault as the lonely…I don’t even know what to call Pluto anymore, a moon?...is no longer considered a planet.
Still, it was a lot of fun to create. I’m curious how long it will last before my cats find a way to attack and dismantle it.
Buzz it!
