Galaxies Galore!

This week’s workshop was about galaxies.

Two girls were missing this week, and not knowing when/if they would arrive, I waited about ten minutes before really getting started. While we waited, the other girls worked on a few different things (keep reading to find out what).

When we got started we talked about the different kinds of galaxies, how they’re made of a few thousand to a hundred trillion stars, and how scientists believe that there may be black holes at the center of most galaxies-- including our own!

It may have seemed unrelated at the time, but we also talked about and viewed some work by Jackson Pollock and talked about the technique of “drip painting”.

(Blue Poles, Jackson Pollock)

Then to transition into the idea for our project, I showed the girls a video of a neutron’s star motion through space as tracked by the Fermi telescope: Vela’s Motion. Some girls said that the motion of the star reminded them of a Spirograph.

Finally, to connect the different concepts, I asked the question: What do you think would happen if we dripped paint from a swinging pendulum? I asked the girls to predict what they thought would happen. Almost without exception (Sadie had watched me experimenting at home) the girls predicted the paint would drip randomly and make crazy marks.

So then we tested our hypothesis:

The girls all thought this was pretty awesome. We kept making these “drip galaxies” until we finally ran out of paint.

Since only one girl could use the pendulum at a time (and we had some time while we waited for our classmates), the girls alternated between working on painting their paper mache planets from our last workshop

....and making other kinds of galaxy images with rubber cement resist…

And marbling liquid watercolor in glue. 

With the rubber cement, the girls used salt to make “star” patterns in the watercolor. Experimentation seemed to be the word of the day. A few girls wanted to see what would happen if they mixed salt in with the glue while they marbled. I didn’t think it would have any effect at all, but I didn’t discourage them from seeing for themselves.

Other experimentation involved, mixing colors in our pendulum paintings (red and yellow here):

We also saw these awesome drip marks on our tarp that protected the floor:

So we wondered what would happen if we tried to make a print of our floor drips:

Reflections

This was a busy day, full of activity. At any given time there was a lot going on. The girls didn’t finish painting their planets, which I thought would happen today. I think it would’ve been possible if not for all the other projects they were able to work on (and be distracted by).  Everyone was engaged though and working diligently on something. I think finishing up our planets will just need to be an activity that we focus on during the edges of classes when other lessons are finished early.

A lot of research and preparation went into the process of pendulum painting. The exact right height of the pendulum, how close the nozzle was to the paper, the kind of container, the size of the hole it dripped from, the consistency of the paint, the type of paper…every little variable changed the outcome. I went from terrible results, to mediocre results, to finally some decent results before I was ready to do it with the girls.

I think it was worth it, but it’s really true that sometimes things can look effortless only because of the many hours of work you didn’t see!