Space is quite large…

Last Friday I did the talk at JFC, the kids club that we run. Our theme this half term has been “Space”. I decided to do a slot on the hugeness of space. To be honest as I did a little research I got pretty overwhelmed by it all. It’s AMAZING!

Let’s start with our solar system. Our sun is a star [not just that it is famous, or even good at it's job, but one of those twinkling things in the sky] a lot of people don’t know that you know. It has 9 planets [arguably 10] spinning around it. The first thing we did was get someone to stand with a football, and pretend it is the sun. That is the scale we were working on: the sun is the size of a football. So haw far away is the next planet,
Mercury? 10 paces
then Venus? another 9 paces
then Earth? another 7 paces
then Mars? another 14 paces

As you can imagine by now we are placed around the edge of the hall, the hall isn’t long enough. By the way did you know that if you decided to drive to Mars from Earth at 70 mph it would take you 80 years?

then Jupiter? another … 95 paces [think about it]

For this one I had to set a kid off walking around the hall counting off the paces. Round and round he went. We carried on regardless… our model stopped there cos it is all stupidly [;o)] big. Saturn ANOTHER 112 paces, Uranus [snigger] ANOTHER 249 paces, Neptune ANOTHER 281 paces, Pluto ANOTHER 242 paces [depening on the time of year]. I had thought about setting all of these off together around the room, but from Mars the Pluto person would have had to walk 979 paces!!

So we got back to the scale thing. So the sun is a football, how big is the Earth? I lined up some objects: a mini football, a tennis ball, a large bouncy ball, a golf ball, a small bouncy ball, a marble, a ball bearing,a coffe bean, a peppercorn and a mustard seed. The kid’s guessed first at a tennis ball size … WAY off. We eventually got to the peppercorn - we live on the peppercorn planet - 6.4 billion of us!! Venus is also peppercorn sized, Mars & Mercury are mustard seed sized…

But get this our solar system, that we can hardly even visualise is part of a galaxy called the Milky Way. How big is the Milky Way? Well, people guess that our sun is one of AT LEAST 140 million stars in the Milky Way, more it is probably more like 100 billion. The disc that is the milky way is: 600,000,000,000,000,000 miles across.

WOW, that’s unbelievable!!!

Wait…

There are other galaxies in the known universe. How many? One child guessed 6. Nearly, but not quite…

Best guess is “several billion”… [rubbish guess, I say...]

So, how big is God?

Space is quite large…

Last Friday I did the talk at JFC, the kids club that we run. Our theme this half term has been “Space”. I decided to do a slot on the hugeness of space. To be honest as I did a little research I got pretty overwhelmed by it all. It’s AMAZING!

Let’s start with our solar system. Our sun is a star [not just that it is famous, or even good at it's job, but one of those twinkling things in the sky] a lot of people don’t know that you know. It has 9 planets [arguably 10] spinning around it. The first thing we did was get someone to stand with a football, and pretend it is the sun. That is the scale we were working on: the sun is the size of a football. So haw far away is the next planet,
Mercury? 10 paces
then Venus? another 9 paces
then Earth? another 7 paces
then Mars? another 14 paces

As you can imagine by now we are placed around the edge of the hall, the hall isn’t long enough. By the way did you know that if you decided to drive to Mars from Earth at 70 mph it would take you 80 years?

then Jupiter? another … 95 paces [think about it]

For this one I had to set a kid off walking around the hall counting off the paces. Round and round he went. We carried on regardless… our model stopped there cos it is all stupidly [;o)] big. Saturn ANOTHER 112 paces, Uranus [snigger] ANOTHER 249 paces, Neptune ANOTHER 281 paces, Pluto ANOTHER 242 paces [depening on the time of year]. I had thought about setting all of these off together around the room, but from Mars the Pluto person would have had to walk 979 paces!!

So we got back to the scale thing. So the sun is a football, how big is the Earth? I lined up some objects: a mini football, a tennis ball, a large bouncy ball, a golf ball, a small bouncy ball, a marble, a ball bearing,a coffe bean, a peppercorn and a mustard seed. The kid’s guessed first at a tennis ball size … WAY off. We eventually got to the peppercorn - we live on the peppercorn planet - 6.4 billion of us!! Venus is also peppercorn sized, Mars & Mercury are mustard seed sized…

But get this our solar system, that we can hardly even visualise is part of a galaxy called the Milky Way. How big is the Milky Way? Well, people guess that our sun is one of AT LEAST 140 million stars in the Milky Way, more it is probably more like 100 billion. The disc that is the milky way is: 600,000,000,000,000,000 miles across.

WOW, that’s unbelievable!!!

Wait…

There are other galaxies in the known universe. How many? One child guessed 6. Nearly, but not quite…

Best guess is “several billion”… [rubbish guess, I say...]

So, how big is God?

A Posting Fast?

Although it may appear as if I am on a blogging fast I am actually not! I have had things I wanted to post but actually getting round to it has been a little harder. Frustrating, but never mind!

One little enjoyable moment this week was noticing on the stats pages that the search string “cineworld northampton” had pulled up our site. And then I noticed that there were a significant number of hits in the vue and cineworld pages. And then lastly I noticed that most hits on those pages were the entry pages to the site. My super sluth brain kicked into action and I came to a radical conclusion. And then I tested it. Sure enough if you type “vue northampton” or “cineworld northampton” into google we are on the first page!! cool, eh?! Even “cinema northampton” works pretty well!

A Posting Fast?

Although it may appear as if I am on a blogging fast I am actually not! I have had things I wanted to post but actually getting round to it has been a little harder. Frustrating, but never mind!

One little enjoyable moment this week was noticing on the stats pages that the search string “cineworld northampton” had pulled up our site. And then I noticed that there were a significant number of hits in the vue and cineworld pages. And then lastly I noticed that most hits on those pages were the entry pages to the site. My super sluth brain kicked into action and I came to a radical conclusion. And then I tested it. Sure enough if you type “vue northampton” or “cineworld northampton” into google we are on the first page!! cool, eh?! Even “cinema northampton” works pretty well!

A Posting Fast?

Although it may appear as if I am on a blogging fast I am actually not! I have had things I wanted to post but actually getting round to it has been a little harder. Frustrating, but never mind!

One little enjoyable moment this week was noticing on the stats pages that the search string “cineworld northampton” had pulled up our site. And then I noticed that there were a significant number of hits in the vue and cineworld pages. And then lastly I noticed that most hits on those pages were the entry pages to the site. My super sluth brain kicked into action and I came to a radical conclusion. And then I tested it. Sure enough if you type “vue northampton” or “cineworld northampton” into google we are on the first page!! cool, eh?! Even “cinema northampton” works pretty well!