Centre for Life Astro Maths

On Friday 4th November Year 5 and 6 had a visit from scientists at the Centre for Life for an Astro Maths day. It was great fun! We began the day with a Rocket Investigation! We discussed different angles and got into groups of 3 to make a paper rocket. We tested the rocket and then made improvements to try to make it travel further. After that we used the rocket launcher and measured the distance travelled in metres and centimetres. We then changed the angle that we propelled the rocket from depending on how far the previous rocket travelled. We found that a 50 degree angle made our rockets travel the furthest! The winning group's rocket travelled 8m 40cm.
 
In the afternoon we went into a Planetarium which was exciting looking at the stars, phases of the moon and planets. We spotted the Milky way and Galaxy.
 
After that we looked at 10 different rocks and predicted which 3 rocks were meteorites! KH predicted, " I think number 10 is a meteorite because it is very lightweight and I've never seen a rock like this before."
JR predicted, "I think number 5 because it's red and sandy and Mars is red and rusty and I don't recognise ever seeing this type of rock on Earth before."
We discussed the area and perimeter and how to calculate the volume of a cube or cuboid. We pretended that we were scientists as they can identify meteorites based information about the volume and mass of the rocks.