North Shore High School Earth Science teachers including Laura DiLallo, Alexandra Acosta, Josh Timlin and Chris Gish took their students on a field trip to the Cradle of Aviation on Dec. 13. 

Ms. DiLallo said, “The purpose of the trip was to review and enhance our astronomy unit with hands-on flight and space exhibits and experience shows in a way that made students feel like they were in space or outside looking at the stars. We saw two planetarium shows including Current Night Sky and Birth of Earth.” She continued, “These shows talked about what stars and constellations are visible in our night sky at this time of the year, as well as the myths that ancient cultures attributed to these celestial objects.

Student Mika Ikawa stated, “It is easier now to visualize different aspects of space after the second planetarium show especially, as the different portrayals of the formation of Earth gave me a clearer picture and idea of how everything started.”  

In addition, the North Shore Earth Science students also visited a number of exhibits in the Cradle of Aviation including the “Exploring Space” exhibit. This exhibit featured a real lunar lander and investigated the difficulties of getting to and traveling in space.

Student Hannah Checo said, “During my visit to the exhibits on the trip, I learned how much impact was needed to get a rocket beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. With the knowledge from the trip, you could launch a Styrofoam rocket. This rocket needed a lot of power to be launched out of the tube. This was because it was going against gravity.”  

“Something I learned and found really interesting is that there are multiple parts of a rocket ship” said student Chloe Rowell and they all disconnect and so most of the rocket stays on the moon while only the very small part at the top where the astronauts go comes back to Earth.”

Student Joshlynn Wang concluded by saying, “In the exhibits, I learned about a lot of space stuff, such as the prototypes for rockets, astronaut suits and landing capsules. I also found a scale that would show you how much you would weigh on the Moon (I was 20.0 lbs). You weigh less than half your weight on the Moon!”

Thank you to all of the North Shore Earth Science teachers and the Cradle of Aviation for providing our students with such a wonderful, hands-on, educational field trip.