Mr. Russell’s 5th Class did lots of activities for Space Week 2018! One of the highlights took place on Monday, October 8th, when the Minister for Training, Skills, Innovation, Research and Development John Halligan visited the class to take part in that day’s activities.
On the day, the boys were doing two science experiments with a space theme: one was looking at the effect of a meteor strike on a planet’s surface, and the other was seeing how gases are used in space travel. The first experiment used a dice, a golf ball and a sliotar, to see how different shaped items of different weights can have a different impact on the landscape. The boys talked about density affecting the impact too.
The second experiment was mixing soluble vitamin tablets with water in sealed containers. The idea was to see the containers shoot skyward – but on the day, this didn’t happen! It was a good lesson for the boys to see that sometimes things don’t work out as planned, and you have to change some of the conditions or materials and try again.
Following the experiments, the boys returned to the classroom and had a quick chat about density, and the Bermuda Triangle, before moving into a quick talk about sailing ships, leading to a chat about the night sky and the star constellations.
After that, Minister Halligan talked about his own personal interest in space, and about Ireland’s new membership of the European Southern Observatory. The Minister also took questions from the class, and ended his visit by doing an interview for the school radio station.
St. Stephen’s was delighted to receive a visit from Minister Halligan, and the class posed for a photo at the end of the talk, which you can see below:
