“Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.” - Carl Sagan
About two years ago I read 2312, a murder mystery set in various places throughout our solar system. The most fascinating part was imagining how we'll slowly expand throughout the solar system. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory released fun tourist posters of many of those locations (seen below), and artist Erik Wernquist created the following video, using the words of scientist and dreamer Carl Sagan. It is one of my favorites, and I thought I would share it with you all.
From the website: "Wanderers is a vision of humanity's expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available."
We are taking a look at chemical changes in fifth grade. For the last two weeks we've learned how transportation choices affect the air quality in Georgia, and participated in a nation-wide cartoon strip contest to educate our peers - this week we are creating homemade ground-level ozone detection strips. Ground-level ozone is harmful to breathe in; we really just want it higher up in the atmosphere to help protect us from the sun's rays.
Afterwards we pulled some weeds in the Nature Nook to make room for crops, and along the way found feathers from a bird we think was eaten by a hawk!
And then we played for a couple of minutes, because snow.
