Last Monday Bruce was guest speaker in Finn’s class for another stint teaching Kindergarteners a little bit about communicating with Mars. As he was with Ezra’s class two years ago, he was a big hit this time. The giant Mars globe is a good start.
First he wanted to give the kids an idea of how far Mars is from Earth and their relative sizes. Here he is blowing up Earth.
Then he blew up Mars and our moon and the kids took a look at their sizes.
Next up, he talked about the very large antennas used to communicate with spacecraft so far away.
And pulled out our homemade antennas for a demonstration.
Finn got to be the volunteer to listen with the “big ear.”
He moved all the way to the back of the room …
… and could still hear what a classmate said through the other antenna.
Of course, the part of his talk that really kills is the volume miscalculation water trick. I think the kids understood perfectly this volume calculation.
Or maybe they just wanted to play with the Rover wheel he brought in.
But really, once the experiment starts (to see if he calculated the volume correctly) their eyes are glued forward … until chaos breaks out.
That’s just a stippet of the video; I put the full 3:54 of it up on YouTube:
My favorite part is when he defends math. Hopefully the fact that he got it wrong twice won’t deter these future mathematicians too much.
I cut the video off a few seconds early — just before he yelled, “I did the calculation for a cylinder and it should be a truncated cone!” I don’t think anyone else heard him over the screams of laughter.