Hey kids today we're going to learn
about
nebulas or giant clouds of dust and gas
out in space. In fact we're going to make
one in your kitchen.
What you'll need is a salad spinner some
washable tempera paints
and a round circle of construction paper.
Open the lid on the salad spinner and
place your round piece of construction
paper in the bottom. Make sure you've
trimmed it so that it fits in the bottom.
Now you'll drip different colors of
washable tempera paint
onto your construction paper. Imagine
each different color is a different
element like hydrogen or helium. Pick
just a few
and make sure that the paints touch a
little bit as you drip them onto the
construction paper surface. Even though
we're using washable paint it's
really important to get permission to
use this salad spinner before you do
this experiment.
When you're happy with your combination
of elements replace the salad spinner
lid
and depress the plunger a few times to
make
your nebula spin.
While that's running let's talk about
nebulas,
clouds of gas and dust in space. Some
like the Orion nebula are star nurseries
while others like the clown face nebula
happen after a star has exploded and
spewed
elements out into the universe.
We take off the lid of our salad spinner
after it's
finished, we can see that we've created a
nebula here out of our colors.
Now i used full strength tempera paints
but i wanted to see what would happen
if I diluted them a little bit maybe
three parts paint to one part
water, in this way you can do a little
science experiment and see what
different
patterns and colors and thicknesses of
the paint,
what kind of nebulas they produce.
After speeding up our salad spinner you
can see that this nebula is very
different from the other one
and that's a great example for what
nebulas are like in space they all
look a little bit different and often we
use pictures from many telescopes to
produce the bright and colorful images
you see when you look at pictures on the
interne. Hope you had fun with your spin
art nebula
and learned a little bit more about the
different things that happened to stars
in their life cycles,
whether it's a big or a small star the
elements that get exploded out of it at
the end of its life
make everything around us including you
and me.
 
