Cool After School: Time Travel

by Vicky on March 28, 2011

When I was preparing for the previous week’s class on sundials, one of the dialists on the North American Sundial Society site included a link on his website for Jon Leslie’s gallery of paper models of real and fictional spacecraft!

Imagine my delight when I stumbled upon Joy Cohn’s geodesic sphere model of the Chronosphere from the science fiction television series, 7 Days.  From the information Joy provided with her model, I learned that 7 Days was based around the premise of time travel.

Since the geodesic design of the Chronosphere linked up with our study of geodesic domes, and time travel linked up with our study of sundials, how could I resist turning the Cool After School crowd loose on this project?

I gave everyone a captain’s log sheet and asked them where they would choose to go time travelling.  Since the series was science fiction, I told them that they could include fictional places and times.  Here is our list:

Mars (when it was inhabited by fire-breathing dragons)

Mars (first manned landing)

Earth’s Moon, July 20, 1969

Paris, Exposition Universelle, 1855

Planet inhabited by water dragons, unicorns, and faeries

Rome, 1st century CE

With my laptop, we explored ancient Rome, Mars, and the Moon on Google Earth.

Then the kids and their parents worked on making their Chronosphere models, which were much harder than our earlier geodesic dome model (as the sphere nears completion, it becomes harder and harder to get your hand inside).  But, despite the difficulty, they persevered and constructed beautiful models.

May they guide their ships into the far reaches of their imaginations!

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