P2 trip to Dynamic Earth

Today we spent the afternoon at Dynamic Earth finding out about our wonderful planet Earth and its place in Space.

An interactive storytelling session followed and here we imagined a meteorite crash landing into our garden. Our task was to find it amongst the rocks where it had landed. We identified the black, shiny, and surprisingly heavy space rock using a magnet and discovered that the meteorite we were holding was real and over 45 billion years old!

We then had to imagine we were going on a journey into Space. We had to think about what we would take and what we would wear. We decided that a space suit, gloves, boots and a helmet as well as space food and water were essential. As we blasted off from Earth, we passed by the International Space station. We spotted some astronauts doing a spacewalk and they gave us a wave. We passed on and landed our spacecraft on the moon. We then went on a moon walk and extracted some specimens from the moon’s surface. We placed them in a test tube to take them back to Earth for further investigation. We glimpsed the Earth rising above the moon’s surface and wondered why this was happening. We then had fun physically demonstrating the orbit of the moon around the Earth whilst the Earth was orbiting the Sun at the same time!

Having landed safely back on Earth we went to the planetarium for a tour of the night skies above Edinburgh. Our astronomer pointed out some planets we might see such as Saturn with its beautiful rings, Venus and the ‘rusty’ planet Mars. He pointed out some of the constellations we might see above our city, such as the three stars on Orion’s belt and, the bull named Taurus with its horns and the cluster of stars called the Five Sisters. We were shown the surface of the moon with its craters and seas and watched live coverage of the first landing on the moon near the sea of tranquility. We listened to some of the astronauts talking movingly about their memories of this incredible moment in history. We also learnt about the Artemis mission which will see the first woman step onto the moon’s surface.

After our dizzying trip through Space, P2 returned to Cargilfield amazed by what we had learnt. We really felt we had been floating amongst the stars!