Churchill Science

Playgrounds are fun for kids, but they also follow the laws of physics. We’ve been learning about gravity and friction and simple machines with 202!

For our end-of-unit project, we designed our own playgrounds. We’ll post those photos soon. In the meantime, here’s a short video about the Imagination Playground in a Box:

The LCROSS mission is a search for water on the moon. The LCROSS mission is going to do this by sending a rocket crashing into the moon causing a big impact and creating a crater, throwing tons of debris and potentially water ice and vapor above the lunar surface.

More about it:

Free Spirit! Video from JPL
For the past two months, one of the Mars rovers has been stuck in some loose sand. This video shows scientists testing out different ways that they could try to get the rover out and moving again. It’s really important for them to test things out before actually trying it, or they could end up getting the rover stuck for good! It’s hard to drive, especially when you’re millions of miles away!

A comet is a mix of rocky material, water ice, and a variety of other ingredients (as pictured here). Try out making some different comets and launch them into orbit around the Sun!

Many of you (222 kids especially) had a ton of questions about sending animals into space. Now you can learn more about the history of monkeys in space. Click on the picture to see National Geographic’s 50th Anniversary photo gallery.

222’s Moon – created with flour, chocolate powder and marbles

The Moon – Visible Light

Room 227 asked me to post some photos of their recent experiments with creating sugar crystals. The goal was to create rock candy, but instead they got crystals across the tops of their cups. Then they tried adding water to the cups and stirring, with some neat looking (but not very tasty) results.

Why didn’t the sugar and water mix turn into rock candy? Any thoughts?