AN ASTEROID HITS THE SURFACE OF THE MOON

I watched a television programme all about space called "The Sky At Night". There were real scientists and astronomers talking about the stars and planets. In this episode they were talking about the Moon. They did an experiment to show what happened when an ASTEROID hit the moon billions of years ago. This is why there are craters and patterns on the moon. There are two different types of rock on the Moon. There is the old rock which is white and was formed when the Moon was formed when a giant asteroid crashed into the Earth. The new rock is which is dark formed from volcanic eruptions that happened afterwards. It is made from lava that has become hard. Bright craters are newer craters and are made when asteroids crash into the dark rock and expose the white rock beneath it. This is what we demonstrated with the experiment. Dark craters are old craters that have been filled with lava.

I am putting a layer of flour to be the old light rock and then sprinkling over a layer of cocoa powder to be the new dark rock.

The asteroid is about to hit the surface of the Moon!

Yeah! A brilliant crater!

It has even made rays, which is where the rock fires off across the Moon in lines. You can see these on the Moon too.

Sometimes experiments do not work first time! I did not use enough flour the first time. It was not deep enough!

RAINBOWS ON THE DOOR!

I was in the living room and I saw two rainbow patterns on the door. I was amazed and did not know how they got there. I now know that light bounces of things that reflect and sometimes the colours that are in the light that we can't normally see get separated into the rainbow colours. The light bounced off the mirror in the living room. When rainbows are made, the light from the sun bounces off the raindrops which are like billions of tiny mirrors.

HOW DO BIRDS FLY?

I am often wondering about this. I asked Mummy the other day, "Why is it that birds can fly when there is gravity?" It was good to read about it in my Usborne Pocket Scientist book. I learned that it is the shape of the birds wing that helps it to fly. The shape is called an AEROFOIL. The way the air goes over and under this shapes helps the bird to lift off the ground.

We tried an experiment. We made an aerofoil shape and hung it from a piece of cotton. We then blew across the top to see if it would move upwards. It didn't actually work but I did get an idea of what should happen. We watched a funny clip on YouTube all about aerofoils.

CRYSTAL ROPE

I am doing an experiment to see if I can grow a line of crystals along a piece of wool. I put 6 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda in two jars of hot water. I weighed down the wool with two paperclips. The wool will soak up the mixture and hopefully in a week's time there will be lots of crystals along the wool. I am excited to see what happens.

MY SOLAR SYSTEM MODEL

I am making a model of the solar system to hang in my bedroom. I will look up and see the sun and the planets above me. I am making them out of papier mache and paint. I am not sure how I will make the rings of Saturn yet. It will be amazing!

THE DAY I MET A REAL SCIENTIST AT THE THINK TANK

We went to a home ed day at the Think Tank in Birmingham and had a brilliant day. Mummy and I did a trail around the zoology section. We saw fossils of an ancient deer, an ancient crocodile and a triceratops. There were lots of stuffed animals. There were two huia birds that are both extinct, which is very sad. People used to kill them so they could wear their pretty feathers.

We then went to see a film on the big screen in the IMax. It was about penguins. It was amazing. We saw the Mummy and Daddy penguin look after their egg and their chick. It was funny when the chick lost its fluffy coat. I liked the elephant seals when they were yawning and making rude noises!

We did a workshop all about light. We made shadow shows and found things that glow in the dark.

We saw lots of old things like bicycles, trams, airplanes, cogs and wheels. We also played in the new science garden until it rained.

My favourite bit was the Cauldron Chemistry show. A wizard showed us how he could pass his magician's exams using science instead of magic. It was fun to watch him make potions and explosions. At the end of the show Mummy and I spoke to the wizard and we said hello to his friend who is a REAL scientist! His name is Ben and he is a paleobiologist! I have written about meeting him ....

 

DINOSAUR FOSSILS AT NEW WALK MUSEUM LEICESTER

I love dinosaurs and have been looking at lots of books about them. My favourite dinosaur is the Gigantosaurus. We went to the New Walk museum in Leicester with our cousin Margaret and saw lots of dinosaur fossils. There was a huge model of a dinosaur that lived in Leicestershire millions of years ago. It was a bit like a brontosaurus. There were also lots of rocks and crystals to look at. I saw some amazing ones from different parts of the world.  I bought a bag of pretty crystals from the museum shop. We also saw some devil's toenails like I found in Drakes Broughton.