Seventh Grade Journeys to Outer Space

During Kristin Montalvo Suer’s space unit, seventh-grade students study the vastness of the universe and its mysteries through several hands-on learning experiences.

Watching a “Black Hole”

Before one of their first demonstrations, students journeyed through the life cycle of a star, ending with the potential consequence of a super red giant collapsing — the creation of a black hole.

“Using a large piece of black fabric and a bocce ball to mimic the pull of gravity, students watched marbles spiral inward — just like stars being drawn into a black hole’s grasp,” Suer said.

Characteristics of Light

How do scientists study stars that are millions of lightyears away? That’s one of the questions students answered as they learned about the characteristics of light. 

To better understand how color, brightness, and size are connected, seventh graders stepped into a pitch-black closet and explored the visible light spectrum. 

Seeing in-person how the different light properties worked together enabled students to understand how scientists use the same knowledge to infer information about distant stars. 

H-R Star Diagram

Students constructed an H-R diagram using magnetic stars to investigate how brightness and luminosity are related. 

An H-R diagram, or Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, is a scatter plot that shows the link between stars’ absolute magnitude/luminosities and their stellar classifications/effective temperatures. 

While completing the activity, the young astronomers analyzed the main sequence trend, analyzed outliers, and learned how stellar size can be inferred from temperature and brightness.

Comet Creation

While studying Solar System small bodies, students helped create a model comet using dry ice and everyday materials like sand, vinegar, water, and syrup to represent dust, amino acids, and organic matter. 

“They explored the different parts of a comet — including the nucleus, coma, and tail — to better understand how these icy travelers form and behave in space,” Suer said. 

The seventh graders’ space unit concludes with a field trip to iSpace in December, where students will role play living and working on a lunar research base and rely on their fellow crew members to ensure the mission’s success.