Duffer News for September 2006

A Look at Pluto

As a teacher, I loved Pluto, because it was one of those words that could snap a day dreaming student back into my classroom.
Sun-Times Columnists ZAY N. SMITH stated in his QT column that his 3rd grade teacher used to use the mnemonic "Mary's Violet Eyes Make John Stay Up Nights Proposing" to teach the planets and their order. I discovered that that same mnemonic worked better with upper grade students. Zay pointed out that since Pluto is gone,

"We can now only guess what John stays up nights doing because of Mary's violet eyes."

I used to use "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" with my younger students.

I guess we can change that to "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos" since Pluto is gone.

Here is some information to use with your children, when you explain why Pluto got downgraded to a Dwarf Planet. (It took us years to remove the word, "dwarf" from our PC vocabulary and now it is back.)

To be a planet, the assembly ruled, a world must meet three criteria:

(1) It must have enough mass and gravity to gather itself into a ball. Pluto passed this one

(2) It must orbit the sun. Pluto passed this one

(3) It must reign supreme in its own orbit, having "cleared the neighborhood" of other competing bodies. Pluto failed this one because it shares orbit space with Neptune for about 12 years, every 240 years. Remember back in the 1990s Pluto was closer to the Sun than Neptune?

If Pluto had a good lawyer, it could argue that Neptune has not "cleared it's Neighborhood" (since Pluto jumps in there every 240 years.)

It could also rule that our planet Earth has not "cleared it's Neighborhood", since we are buzzed many times per year by asteroids and comets.

Read what Adler Planetarium Astronomer, Larry Ciupik had to say about that in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Meanwhile, according to the IAU, the Solar System has eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; and three dwarf planets: Ceres, Pluto and 2003 UB313.

Not only are we not the center of the universe ...

August 28, 2006

BY ZAY N. SMITH SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

A call was placed.

"Adler Planetarium."

Astronomer Larry Ciupik, please.

"Larry Ciupik."

Pluto.

"Yes."

The International Astronomical Union now says Pluto is not a planet.

"That seems to be the ruling."

It is because Pluto does not fit one of the three requirements for being a planet, which is that it has "cleared the neighborhood around its orbit" of other orbital bodies.

"That is the one."

QT is now looking at statistics showing that Earth, in the next month alone, will see 17 asteroids coming through the neighborhood of its orbit. One asteroid recently passed almost as close as the moon. Doesn't it seem that Earth is not meeting this requirement?

"There is that school of thought among astronomers."

Thank you.

"You're welcome."

So we might as well accept it:

Earth is not a planet.

Centrifugal farce

News Item: "Earth might have spun on its side to keep its balance in the distant past, and could do so again, scientists reported."

This would be more impressive if Earth were a planet.

August 31, 2006

BY ZAY N. SMITH SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

No more pizzas

Matt Moeller, a Houston, Texas, reader, regarding the mnemonic device "My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" that was used for the nine planets until Pluto was ruled unplanetlike, writes:

"I was always taught: 'My Very Elderly Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Pizzas.' How many of these can there be?"

Quite a few. And now the need is for Plutoless ones:

•Julie Donovan, a Chicago reader, writes:

"My son simply changed it to 'My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nothing.' "

•Katie McCarthy, a Chicago reader, writes:

"Attending a Catholic school on the Southwest Side I was taught: 'Many Vigorous Earth Men Jump Straight Up Near Pluto'. Now I'll have to teach my son: 'Many Vigorous Earth Men Jump Straight Up Nightly.' "

•Lori Bruggerman, a Thornton reader, writes:

"Merry Vagrants Enjoying Moonshine Jugs Snore Until Noon."

•Walter Brzeski, a Chicago reader, writes:

"Most Vermont Eateries Mainly Just Serve Unheated Nachos."

•Pat McGarry, a Springfield reader, writes:

"May Vagaries Emerge Momentarily Justifying Somnolent Undecipherable Neocons."

We are starting to make less and less sense regarding a solar system with Pluto.

Which means we're getting there.

Here are 2 songs that I have used to teach Astronomy

Clint Black - D'lectrified

Galaxy Song

When you’re feeling inside out and insecure,
and life keeps getting you down.
When all life’s daily worries· hurry through your head.
You don’t want to even ·get up.
You just lie around in bed.
When you feel you just can’t take it anymore
And you wonder what on earth it is all for your love life’s like a war zone
Your tv’s on the blink it’s enough to drive a drinking man to stop and take a
Think

·just ·remember that you standing on a planet that’s evolving, revolving at 900
Miles an hour. it’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see

Are moving at a million miles a day.
In an outer spiral orb, at 40,000 miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the milky way

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It’s a 100,000 light years side to side
It bulges in the middle 16,000 light years thick,
But out by us it’s just 3,000 light years wide.
We’re 30,000 light years from galactic central point.
We go round every 200,000,000 years.
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know, 12,000,000 miles a minute,
And that’s the fastest speed there is!
So, remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth.
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
‘cause I’m afraid that we’ve been cheated here on earth.

Crazy Planet, from the Sound of Music

A crazy planet full of crazy people, is somersaulting all around the sky,

and every time we make another somersault, another day goes by, (Rotating on it's Axis)

Chorus

There's no way to stop it, no there's no way to stop it, no you can't stop it even if you try,

You're a fool if you worry, You're a fool if you worry, over anything but number 1

While somersaulting at a cockeyed angle (23.5 Degrees),

we make a cockeyed circle (ellipse) around the Sun, (Revolving around the Sun)

and every time we make another circle, another year goes by,

Chorus

There's no way to stop it, no there's no way to stop it, no you can't stop it even if you try,

You're a fool if you worry, You're a fool if you worry, over anything but number 1

I sent the following e-mail to Sun-Times Columnists, Zay Smith, so that I could get permission to use his material:

Dear Zay,

I love your column and I really enjoyed your fun with Pluto last week. As a former CPS teacher, Pluto was always one of my favorites, because it was a word that could snap a day dreaming student back into my classroom. I'm recovering from hip replacement surgery, so in a fit of boredom, I posted a web page about Pluto for my teacher friends and former students, using some of your clips. Let me know if it is OK, otherwise I'll pull it.

You can view my page at: http://www.lopatka.net/planets/index.htm

Your 3rd grade teacher may have been a Chicago Teachers College graduate, because I learned the mnemonic "Mary's Violet Eyes Make John Stay Up Nights Proposing" in a Science Methods class there in 1962. I discovered that that mnemonic worked better with upper grade students. I used the Pizza one with my little ones. I taught an astronomy class for 5 and 6 year olds at the Adler Planetarium in the 1980s and 90s.

Zay replied:

I'm honored to be a part of your site, and will keep an eye on it, with it in

mind to include it in my Sunday internet column.

Thanks very much.

Zay.

E-mail me at: g.lopatka@comcast.net