"Out Of This World" Visit

Second grade had an "out of this world" visit from one of our Upper School science teachers, Jordan Burkey. Jordan brought in moon rocks and talked to us about the moon. In the process we learned about the different phases of the moon such as half moon, full moon, waxing gibbous and waning gibbous, crescent. Jordan explained that the surface of the moon was a powder consistency almost like flour but you could still walk on it. There is a famous boot print that was left on the moon and it was left by Buzz Aldrin. A lot of people may think that it was Neil Armstrong but it was not! Apollo 11 was the first mission to land on the moon carrying three astronauts, Neil and Buzz got to walk on the moon and Michaels stayed in the spaceship and orbited the moon till they were finished. They landed on July 20, 1969 which was 50 years ago! We also learned about some more famous astronauts such as Mae Jemison and Yuri Gagarin.

We learned when a rocket launches the rocket becomes smaller and smaller becuase sections of the rocket detaches because this allows the rocket to travel more quickly through space and to use less fuel.  The astronauts sit in the very front piece of the rocket called a cone. He also went on to explain the process of retrieving the Lunar Lander also getting the astronauts off the moon.

Lastly, we were able to see real moon rocks! One of the rocks was made out of lava, the white rock is from the mountains, the brownish white  were made out of soil. Jordan also shared with us that there is nothing on the earth that is as old as the rocks that we saw. The rocks were believe to be around 4.5 billion years old. We also learned that they rocks were really expensive! They were worth 10 Million dollars.  The rocks were encased in glass because they were never touched by human hands because of the oils and they were not exposed to the air in fear that they would be damaged.

"I really enjoyed the moon rocks because we have never seen any thing as cool as that. We have only read about it!"

"I enjoyed it because i didn't know that much about the moon now I know more about the different astronauts and rocket ships.

"I thought that Jordan did a really good job at teaching because he made me feel really curious and want to keep learning! "