HartRAO at the Sasol Techno-X Science Festival
Each year, Sasol holds a science festival in Sasolburg for schools and the
public. This year Pulane Moroeng and Logan Moodley spent from 14 to 28
August at the festival. The images below give an idea of what happened.
Lectures and demonstrations were presented every hour on the forthcoming solar
eclipse and on basic astronomy. Rocket launching took place
continuously outside the tent in which the shows were given.
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Rocket launching was a real crowd puller.
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Water as a rocket fuel? Why do we need petrol?
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Logan Moodley giving a slide show on the solar eclipse to a keen
audience.
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Another view of the slide show on the solar eclipse.
Props on the table include:
- A white "space helmet" for kitting out a volunteer in a "space suit",
- Cool drink cans weighted as they would feel to pick
up on the Moon and on each planet
- The yellow Sun, blue Earth and tiny white Moon are part of an orrery -
a mechanical model of the Sun, Earth and Moon.
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A tennis ball on a stick makes a great Moon globe for dicovering how the
phases of the Moon occur and how eclipses happen.
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Another student discovers why we will see a solar eclipse on Dec 04.
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Why do we have seasons?
Pulane Moroeng makes good use of the orrery.
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Why do we have eclipses?
Pulane with the versatile orrery.
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How can we safely see what the Sun looks like ?
Pulane shows how to project an image of the Sun with binoculars.
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What does the Sun look like?
Pulane talks about those black spots on the projected image of the Sun.
www.hartrao.ac.za/news/020814sasol/sasol.html
created 2002/11/05 by the Science Awareness Programme
