Jupiter's Storm Experiment

What is the red spot that we see on Jupiter's surface? It is a powerful storm that seems to be never ending. We used some kitchen supplies to reenact this fenomena.

What we used:

bowl

milk

dishwashing soap

food coloring

 

 Pour milk into the bowl and drop couple drops of 2 different colors of food coloring into it, in the same spot.

 

Carefully using your hands swirl the milk around.

 

Then drop one drop of dishwashing liquid right in the middle of the color spot. See the cool reaction.

 

Swirl the bowl one more time and you have an image of the swirling storm on Jupiter!

The kids didn't stop there - they kept on playing with the food coloring and dishwashing soap effect - they loved that!

Saturn's rings experiment

Our next science experiment that involves the Planets was all about the Saturn's rings. We wanted to show why we see the ring as a whole ring and not just icy particles floating around. For that we need:

a record player

black construction paper

chalk

small particles such as - ice cream salt (which is perfect because it looks like ice crystals), sand, glitter, rice

glue

camera

 

Take the black paper and place it on top of the record player, making a hole through the middle part. Take the chalk, place it sideways, and carefully trace the circle shape of the record player. Older kids can do this themselves.

 

 Have the kids cut the circle out.

Give each kid a bowl with the small particles.

 

Have them glue it on the outer side of the circle. When they put the glue down, smudge it a bit with the finger to create bigger surface that the particles could stick to.

 

Let it dry.

 

When it dries, place it on the record player and talk about the particles being visible as individual particles when they are not rotating around the planet.

 

But what if you turn the record player on and make them rotate, just like the actual particles rotate around the Planet Saturn? Place your camera on the tripod and set your exposure on longer time.  This is one of our result pictures.

 

We tried several different variations of materials, thickness of the rings, and speed of the record player. See another picture, where the ring is thicker.

 

Result picture...

Have fun experimenting!

Create your own planets - Solar system art project

The Solar System is on our schedule for the second time in the past 3 years. This is one of the topics the kids enjoy very much and they choose it every time I ask them what they would like to learn about. To kick off the unit, we read the book "There is no place like space" from the Dr. Seuss collection, and since the Cat in the Hat has his own planet at the end of the book, we asked the kid sto design their own Solar system. 

They decided to start by making the stars. They took black construction paper and white paint and by flipping the paint brush's bristles, they splashed the paint on the paper, which makes it look like a galaxy , no kidding!

 

Then they got down to the floor and traced different sizes of circular objects on an easel paper. 

We separated the project into 3 days. This time they colored their planets with markers, choosing their own design. We did stick to 8 planets but they had a free choice of colors and sizes. They got more creative as they went on.

Here they are ready to glue their planets to the "Space" picture. 

 

And now there is a new System up in Space! It's The Adi System!