OUTER SPACE MISSION
RUBY WATSON, YEAR 5C, HOLY CROSS SCHOOL
RECENTLY, year 5 went on an epic trek, out on to the oval.
They were wanting to discover how far apart the eight wonderful planets of our galaxy really are, or at least gain some perspective.
Toilet paper. Who knew it could’ve had so many purposes in life?
Well, year 5 students were about to find out. It was just a normal day for them until their teachers told them that they were going on to the oval to make an awesome science discovery, just by using eight inflatable planets (nine, including our sun, which is a star) and a few rolls of toilet paper.
On the oval, everyone sat down excitedly, more than ready to find out what they would be doing next. The teachers explained what our task was, and we were quite elated to find out that this discovery included a lot of toilet paper.
A student was selected to pick up the inflatable sun and take a spot in front of everyone.
Then 5S teacher Ms Marg Judd picked up a roll of toilet paper and explained that each sheet of toilet paper was to represent 10 million kilometres.
More students were called up to help keep the sheets of toilet paper in place in front of the sun.
Then another student was called up to hold inflatable Mercury, which was six sheets of toilet paper away from the sun, which means that the sun is 60 million kilometres away from Mercury.
Then the same things were completed with Venus, Earth (our wonderful planet) and
Mars.
The students discovered that the further away the planets were from the sun, the more sheets of toilet paper were used.
Earth might be 30 sheets away from Mars, but Venus is only 17 away from Earth.
By the time we got to Uranus, we had already used half of the toilet paper roll, but no one was prepared for the amount of toilet paper sheets that was going to be used for Uranus and Neptune.
Everyone was shocked when 5C teacher Miss Lucy Dixon called out that the gap between Mars and Uranus was more than 100 sheets of toilet paper wide.
But that was nothing compared to the gap between Uranus and our furthest planet away
PAPER PLANETS: Year 5C students Ruby Watson, Zara Keegan and Nadia Nupiri learnt about interplanet distances on the oval with the other year 5 students. from the sun, Neptune, which was over 150 sheets of toilet paper apart.
Finally, the year 5 students had completed their quest and travelled back to their classrooms.
They had discovered lots of fascinating facts, like that the planets keep on getting further and further away from each other depending on how close they are to the sun.
They also discovered that in the process of their journey, a lot of innocent toilet paper had to be sacrificed for them to successfully complete their mission.
Most students’ favourite part of our journey was probably destroying the toilet paper at the end and then tossing it in the air, which of course, came along with picking up every single piece of toilet paper.
All in all, it was an awfully exciting day for the year 5s of Holy Cross School.