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A Walk to Pluto
by Mike Bennett, SOFIA Education
and Public Outreach
USRA/SOFIA astronomer Maureen Savage
recently took twenty fourth-graders on a walk to Pluto. It took
almost all morning.
USRA astronomer Maureen Savage
reviews scale-model planet sizes
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As USRA's SOFIA on-site manager
at Ames Research Center, Maureen spends most of her time dealing
with the myriad issues involved with building a complex airborne
observatory. But every few months, as part of her commitment
to support SOFIA's education program, she spends a morning with
Mrs. Haworth's fourth-grade class at Lexington School in nearby
Los Gatos.
This day's activity was to construct
and actually pace off a scale model of the solar system. Even
with the Sun reduced to the size of a bowling ball, Pluto (a
pinhead) is still nearly half a mile away. Since even this scaled-down
solar system wouldn't fit on the Lexington School campus, the
class took a field trip to a nearby park.
Maureen is the first participant
in the Education Partners Program, one of several programs being
set up by SOFIA's Education
and Public Outreach (EPO) group to encourage partnerships
between scientists and educators. "It's really fun." said Maureen, "I
like working with the kids directly and I've learned a lot about
what really works and doesn't work in the classroom."
Maureen began by asking the kids
about scale models. She held up some model whales and reminded
the class about their recent trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium,
where they had seen full-size models of whales. Satisfied that
the students were comfortable with the concept of a scale model,
Maureen introduced the bowling-ball Sun. From a collection of
peppercorns, dried peas, walnuts, and pinheads, the class quickly
sorted out the various planets (on this scale, Jupiter is a walnut,
while Earth and Venus are peppercorns). The students exercised
great restraint and didn't eat any of the planets.
 Fourth-graders
pace off the distance to the planets
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Maureen had prepared well by making
small flags representing each planet. Guided by Project
ASTRO's "Universe
At Your Fingertips" activity book, she had pre-calculated
the distance to each planet. The whole class paced off the distance
to each planet in turn, and planted its flag in the grass at
the correct distance. From each planet they sighted back to the
Sun to see how big it looked. The inner planets were easy. By
the time they had paced off the distance to Uranus, almost a
quarter-mile away, the Sun was pretty hard to spot. From Pluto
it was completely invisible.
"This is a great activity," said
teacher Nancy Haworth. "The students really got a better understanding
of the tremendous distances between the planets. It's so much
better than just reading about the solar system, or even watching
a video."
Last summer Maureen attended a two-day
workshop put on by the San
Francisco Bay Area Project ASTRO Coalition. Along with 40
other volunteer astronomers and their teacher partners, she learned
and practiced the art of doing "hands-on, minds-on" science activities
in the classroom. She has already completed two of her promised
four visits with Mrs. Haworth's class, and is already planning
the next visit. "I may even continue class visits on my own after
I finish with the EPP program," says Maureen. "It's a really
fun and satisfying way to give something back to the community."
"One of our main EPO goals is to
encourage participation by scientists in the K-12 education process
in a variety of ways" said Edna DeVore, co-lead of SOFIA EPO. "Some
scientists want to work directly with students, and want to learn
what life is like on the educational "front lines." The SOFIA
Education Partners Program is designed for them. We're working
with Project ASTRO because, with 11 coalitions around the country,
they have a very successful infrastructure in place for training
and supporting teacher/astronomer partnerships. Eventually we
hope to support several SOFIA Project ASTRO partnerships per
year, so astronomers working with SOFIA can participate in educational
activities right in their own home communities."
 It's
hard to spot the bowling-ball Sun from walnut-Jupiter
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From Pluto the students retraced
their steps, picked up all the planet flags, and headed back
to school, chattering all the time about the huge distances between
the planets.
Today these students toured the
solar system in their imagination. Before the century is out,
some of them may visit the planets in reality, and maybe they'll
remember that long-ago morning in Los Gatos when they walked
to Pluto.
March, 2001
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