Creating a scale model of the Sun

With the sunshine making a rare and glorious appearance across Wales, it’s been a perfect day to teach children about our Sun — and that’s just what we’ve been doing!

Physics PhD and Stellar Role Model, Peri Jones, joined me at Murch Junior School today where we entertained year 6 students with facts, demos and observations of our closest star.

The school provided a particularly enthusiastic audience, thanks to their teacher who previously attended a Universe in the Classroom teacher training event and took all of our astronomy-goodies back to the school to share with his students.

Today’s workshop covered a number of concepts, from the formation of the Sun through to its eventual demise (much to the students’ delight!) We took along a solar telescopes,

Reenacting the formation of the Solar System

created a scale model of the Sun and invited the children to act as coalescing gas particles to re-enact the formation of the Solar System.

If you are interested in using any of the activities or materials mentioned in this post, contact me at unawe@astro.cf.ac.uk