episode / view more episodes
Space Junk/Scientific Sean
'Space Junk' - After learning about space junk, the kids are determined to help do their part to clean up their 'space neighborhood.' They meet up with Uncle Zucchini, a long-time galaxy garbage man! Using Bortronian technology, they start a cleanup. During the course of the day, our kids learn that recycling is necessary both on Earth and in space! Curriculum: The outer space region around Earth swarms with millions of pieces of man-made space junk that create potential hazards. Objects as small as 4 inches can be seen by radar or optical telescopes on Earth. Cleaning the debris is a challenge. Trips to larger objects could remove them from orbit, but that's expensive. Another proposal is using lasers to provide a path-changing push that wouldn't damage the object. 'Scientific Sean' - Jet is fascinated by Earth paper airplanes when he watches Sean casually fold one. Jet suggests that the kids challenge each other to build the plane that will fly the farthest, and still carry the payload of a message. Sean wants to use the Scientific Method to solve the distance/size issues. CURRICULUM: The Scientific Method is a simple set of rules that scientists use the world over, to make sure that they are doing their experiments correctly and in a way that they can repeat. But great science comes from both the application of this simple set of rules AND from imagination and inspiration.
