On Tuesday the 13nth of April we started the day off with Alex and Ines presenting Pluto and Saturn. Most of us had already done this project before break. There were two long tables in the classroom and each girl presented to one table at a time for about 4-7 minutes.
We learned today that Pluto is the second largest biggest dwarf planet in our solar system, also originally called a planet, but after it didn’t meet certain qualifications such as size they decided to change it to a dwarf planet. Pluto is located in the Kuiper Belt, further from the Sun than Neptune even. Pluto is about a fifth the mass of our Moon, and composed primarily of rock and ices. Pluto has three natural satellites (or moons), named Charon (the biggest one), Nix and Hydra. Charon was the ferryman for the dead in Greek mythology, and is closely related to the god of the underworld, Hades, also known as Pluto in Roman mythology. Nix was the Greek goddess of darkness and light and was the mother of Charon, whereas Hydra was named after the nine headed serpent guarding the underworld (not to be confused with Cerberus).
We also learned today about Saturn today, from Ines. Saturn was named after the Roman god Saturnus (equivalent to the god Cronus in Greek Mythology), the god of agriculture. Saturn is a gas giant, meaning it is mainly made out of Hydrogen and Helium gases, and is also the second biggest planet in our solar system (after Jupiter). Saturn has at least 62 moons, although it is debatable if there are more to discover, and most are named after titans in Greek mythology, such as Rhea. Saturn’s rings seem to be the most astounding thing about this planet, and they are made out of mostly ices and carbon.
After this our class were asking questions regarding astronomy (the questions from black holes to anti-matter to is there another habitable planet), and perhaps took a bit long on this, as class ended fairly soon. The last ten minutes or so of class, we discussed the assignments due soon, such as the blogging for fourth quarter, the reflection post and discussed the open note celestial body test. The blogging is a bit different this quarter; we have to post an edit to 7nth or 8th grade every Friday, due to some people waiting to the last day to post edits (namely me).
-Luke
Some helpfull links for further reading:
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Pluto
http://nineplanets.org/
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/saturn.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/solarsystem/sun_and_planets/saturn
Next scribe is Kamil.
