Today we did the solar system walk. Here's the thing. All those pictures and models and so on of the solar system give the impression that all the planets are right next to each other and about the same size other than Jupiter. They all line up nicely, too.
So last week Douwe's class did The Solar System and it was clear that he does think that. So, okay, the Solar system walk. It reduces the Solar System to scale, and it is really fun. It also keeps your kids busy and entertained on a vacation day which is more to the point.
The scale is 100,000 miles to 1 inch, as you can find out by googling "solar system walk". On this scale, the Sun is a soccer ball and the Earth is a peppercorn and Mercury is a pinhead. So I googled the thing, got a pedometer to measure, and I was done.
Oh, no. See, this scale involves inches, feet, and yards. And the nation of Holland (and more to the point, my pedometer) reads in centimeters. Also, the Solar System walk was invented back in the day when there were nine planets.* So I had to convert to metric and then I had to add in the two other dwarf planets. Here is how that went:
Scribble, scribble. So Ceres is this many meters further on from Mars and scribble, scribble Eris is....where? No way. Try again. Scribble scribble, it's....that's got to be wrong. Try again. Scribble, blot. Well, god damn it, that's three kilometers from Pluto. Which is almost exactly one kilometer from the Sun. I am not walking three extra kilometers with five boys aged two to nine (we did this with one of Douwe's buds from school and his brothers) to stick a pin in the ground and say "That's Eris", scientific integrity be damned.
Dwarf planets are a dumb idea. And much too far away.
So we set the soccer ball down and established that this was the Sun. Then we went ten meters on to Mercury which is a pin head, which we stuck through a bit of yellow paper into the ground. Then we went on to Venus and so on. The big boys ran on ahead counting the distance to the next planet, dodging through the woods and the meteor showers, I mean pine cones thrown up in the air. The asteroid belt turned into pelting one another with mulch and so on. We stopped now and again to turn around and look for the very tiny sun back there. By Pluto they were all truly awed by the distances involved and agreed unanimously that Eris is Very Far Away and let's not do that.
The we turned around and I talked to them about celestial navigation and suggested we needed to find the planets on the way back. Piece of cake they said; you just go back the way you came.
Of the eight planets we found exactly three on the way back. Happily I used planets which could be left. I had a feeling.
So then they decided that the planets had rotated to somewhere else and we lacked the navigational instruments to calculate their respective orbits.
Then we played soccer with the sun for a while and went home.
*In case you do not have a child who visits the NASA site and the Hubble site on a weekly basis: there are eight planets and three dwarf planets -- Ceres, Pluto, and Eris. Ceres is located between Mars and Jupiter, in the asteroid belt which is why we didn't see it for so long. Eris is located three times again as far from Pluto as Pluto is from the Sun. This becomes important in a moment
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Last week
It has been a bit hectic around here. The first week of May the kids were off spring break, then they went to school last week, then they have this week off. Evidently I was not the only one annoyed, there is a note in last week's school newsletter promising that this schedule will not happen next year.
Last week was the 4 day march, which we did again. This year we walked the 5 kilometer per day route. Nel did it for three days and took the fourth day off to go to the theater with Ernest. But she did finish all three days. And Douwe walked/ran about 7 kilometers every day as he spent most of the time playing tag with his buddies. And Daan toughed it out and finished all four days and was pleased as punch with his medal. Though he still has trouble remaining on task, he wants to stop every four seconds and look at the ants or something:
On the last day, you may recall, half the town that is not walking turns out and lines the streets to cheer the finish. It is also usual for the Omas to bring flowers and give them to the kids as they finish -- they have special 4 day kid bouquets with toys and flags and candies tucked in.
So as we were approaching town, I could see my elder child doing a little thinking. Oma, he knew, was off with Ernest. Omas bring flowers. Therefore, he was.....not getting any flowers. So his face went from happy to partly cloudy to threats of thunderstorm and tornadoes as we approached town and he started to complain of being too tired to finish and so on. Unhappily for him, his mother has zero tolerance for this kind of entitlement issue so I serenely pointed out that he would be getting a medal which was quite enough(everybody who finishes all four days gets a medal if they sign up for it).
This led to more pouting and carrying on. Which I firmly ignored. Pointedly ignored. And just as he was peaking in poutiness, we encountered the nice lady with whom I had arranged to bring their flowers. And the world was good again:
Last week was the 4 day march, which we did again. This year we walked the 5 kilometer per day route. Nel did it for three days and took the fourth day off to go to the theater with Ernest. But she did finish all three days. And Douwe walked/ran about 7 kilometers every day as he spent most of the time playing tag with his buddies. And Daan toughed it out and finished all four days and was pleased as punch with his medal. Though he still has trouble remaining on task, he wants to stop every four seconds and look at the ants or something:
On the last day, you may recall, half the town that is not walking turns out and lines the streets to cheer the finish. It is also usual for the Omas to bring flowers and give them to the kids as they finish -- they have special 4 day kid bouquets with toys and flags and candies tucked in.
So as we were approaching town, I could see my elder child doing a little thinking. Oma, he knew, was off with Ernest. Omas bring flowers. Therefore, he was.....not getting any flowers. So his face went from happy to partly cloudy to threats of thunderstorm and tornadoes as we approached town and he started to complain of being too tired to finish and so on. Unhappily for him, his mother has zero tolerance for this kind of entitlement issue so I serenely pointed out that he would be getting a medal which was quite enough(everybody who finishes all four days gets a medal if they sign up for it).
This led to more pouting and carrying on. Which I firmly ignored. Pointedly ignored. And just as he was peaking in poutiness, we encountered the nice lady with whom I had arranged to bring their flowers. And the world was good again:
Monday, May 07, 2007
Spring Break
We went sailing, but you knew that. The problem with an extended sailing trip has been that the boat is a large boat and therefore has a tall mast. On both sides of us there are low bridges. So to get out of a fairly small area, we have to lower the mast, an operation which involves sort of tilting it backwards with a block and tackle apparatus.
Well, the setup on this boat is not really made to lower the mast very often. To wit, it involves feeding extra line into the main support cable for the mast by way of a pulley arrangement which is not actually fixed to anything. You have to hold it with your arms. Er. Dearly Beloved has to hold it with his arms, are you kidding? And Dearly Beloved had never done it before so was not keen on trying it for the first time as we passed under a low bridge in the middle of a shipping lane.
So originally we were going to stick close to home and just go into the woods with the boat. By Wednesday this was not working out all that well, as the boat is very deep and the woods are not. So there are only two places we can get close enough to shore to actually get on land. (Well, except by beaching the boat which has its own drawbacks.) And we don't have a little bitty boat, which is how everybody else seems to solve this problem.
So Wednesday while moored in the woods we decided to try the mast and it went okay. So Thursday off we went to go under the bridge. On the way under the first time all went well except for one small thing: a commercial boat passed us in just the right way as to cause a Very Large Swell which placed us in grave danger of clipping off the top part of the mast. I was in the back of the boat steering and it looked to me as though we were certainly going to clip the bridge. Dearly Beloved was looking on from the bow (holding onto the mast) and he says we were just barely not under the bridge when the wave hit, so the mast actually may have gone higher than the bridge and then dipped under on the downslope of the wave.
It made quite an impression on Eldest, who was next to me: he was whooping and hollering and that evening when he filled out the ship's log he drew a picture of a Ginormous commercial boat and our boat very tiny next to it and then many huge waves.
Youngest remained below for the trip under the bridge, reasoning that if the mast came off he would rather be inside when it did. He was quite certain the mast would either break off or fall down.
And then we went to Willemstad, a fairly small town which is mined, I mean mined with fortifications of various kinds dating from, oh, maybe 16th century to WWII. So the kids got to sit on the cannons:
And put thieves in the dock:
They also played for many hours in the underground bunkers which overlook the harbors. No pictures of that I am afraid, it's dark down there.
Well, the setup on this boat is not really made to lower the mast very often. To wit, it involves feeding extra line into the main support cable for the mast by way of a pulley arrangement which is not actually fixed to anything. You have to hold it with your arms. Er. Dearly Beloved has to hold it with his arms, are you kidding? And Dearly Beloved had never done it before so was not keen on trying it for the first time as we passed under a low bridge in the middle of a shipping lane.
So originally we were going to stick close to home and just go into the woods with the boat. By Wednesday this was not working out all that well, as the boat is very deep and the woods are not. So there are only two places we can get close enough to shore to actually get on land. (Well, except by beaching the boat which has its own drawbacks.) And we don't have a little bitty boat, which is how everybody else seems to solve this problem.
So Wednesday while moored in the woods we decided to try the mast and it went okay. So Thursday off we went to go under the bridge. On the way under the first time all went well except for one small thing: a commercial boat passed us in just the right way as to cause a Very Large Swell which placed us in grave danger of clipping off the top part of the mast. I was in the back of the boat steering and it looked to me as though we were certainly going to clip the bridge. Dearly Beloved was looking on from the bow (holding onto the mast) and he says we were just barely not under the bridge when the wave hit, so the mast actually may have gone higher than the bridge and then dipped under on the downslope of the wave.
It made quite an impression on Eldest, who was next to me: he was whooping and hollering and that evening when he filled out the ship's log he drew a picture of a Ginormous commercial boat and our boat very tiny next to it and then many huge waves.
Youngest remained below for the trip under the bridge, reasoning that if the mast came off he would rather be inside when it did. He was quite certain the mast would either break off or fall down.
And then we went to Willemstad, a fairly small town which is mined, I mean mined with fortifications of various kinds dating from, oh, maybe 16th century to WWII. So the kids got to sit on the cannons:
And put thieves in the dock:
They also played for many hours in the underground bunkers which overlook the harbors. No pictures of that I am afraid, it's dark down there.
More and more footie
Well, the soccer season is over for the fellas. There was actually one more practice last Wednesday but they missed it because we went sailing instead. What will happen next year is anybody's guess, though almost certainly Douwe will go on to a bigger kids' team and Daan will stay on the same team.
They had a friendly match with another team within the same soccer club last week, so they even got to play a game. Our guys' team don't even all have uniforms yet, after all they have only been playing together for five weeks.
The uniform issue led to an Incident with Youngest. You see, my kids don't have uniforms yet. So knowing tht the team colors are blue and white, I put Eldest in a blue t shirt and Youngest in a white one (also, Youngest does not have a blue t-shirt that does not feature Mickey Mouse). Only it turned out this game was the Blues (or team) against the Whites (the other team). Daan persisted in playing with the Whites no matter how many times anybody told him he was on the Blue team. So finally they just let him play for the other team.
Daan doing penalty kicks
This is most of the team; there are abotu three kids missing, wandering around somewhere no doubt.
There are more (and better) pics on the team blog I sent you the link to, and also some other pictures of various other stuff the team has done.
They had a friendly match with another team within the same soccer club last week, so they even got to play a game. Our guys' team don't even all have uniforms yet, after all they have only been playing together for five weeks.
The uniform issue led to an Incident with Youngest. You see, my kids don't have uniforms yet. So knowing tht the team colors are blue and white, I put Eldest in a blue t shirt and Youngest in a white one (also, Youngest does not have a blue t-shirt that does not feature Mickey Mouse). Only it turned out this game was the Blues (or team) against the Whites (the other team). Daan persisted in playing with the Whites no matter how many times anybody told him he was on the Blue team. So finally they just let him play for the other team.
Daan doing penalty kicks
This is most of the team; there are abotu three kids missing, wandering around somewhere no doubt.There are more (and better) pics on the team blog I sent you the link to, and also some other pictures of various other stuff the team has done.
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