Description:

On day three of our Jersey trip, we headed through heavy traffic into St. Helier, to spend the day with Year 5 boys at Victoria College Preparatory School. With a 3-form entry, we spent the morning rotating them through our Solar System and Stars and Constellations modules, which involved a good hour of hands-on activities. After lunch, we brought the whole year together in the main hall, where we started with an Introduction to Gravity, which involved a demonstration using the gravity well (pictured above) and also heading outside to spin cups of water upside down – mostly without getting wet due to the clever application of forces. We ended the day with our usual look at Space Exploration, a talk that highlights how private companies, such as Space-X, are starting to take on the role of space explorers from the usual government organisations.

Once we’d packed up at Victoria College, we headed west to St Peter to spend an evening helping the local Cub group to work their way towards their astronomy badge. During the 90 minutes we had with them, they learnt more about the planets, built a model of the solar system, learnt the difference between stars and planets and because it was a clear night, we were able to head outside to identify 3 constellations we had just introduced them to – namely Ursa Major, Ursa Minor and Cassiopeia. Although there were only 30 boys and girls in the pack, we were joined by a good number of parents and siblings for the evening. Probably our busiest day of the trip so far, but very pleasantly worthwhile.