A Visit to Europa School

 

A visit to Europa School UK

Open Meteorites / June 29, 2023

Last week (22/06/23), Dr Richard Greenwood visited Europa School UK in Culham, Abingdon, bringing a case, containing all sorts of exciting meteorites . Europa School is a multilingual, IB Diploma state school, which offers lessons in both English and a foreign language (French, German or Spanish). Richard, who teaches Chemistry to Sixth-Form students at the school one day a week, showed his students some of the meteorites. The most impressive one is the large piece of Gibeon that he presented to a group of S5 (Year 11) students, who were enjoying a taster day for the IB Diploma Programme they will be starting this September. Dr Greenwood also talked about how valuable the meteorites are, with some being valued at around £20,000! Overall, it was a very fun day and the students were all captivated by the meteorites.

 

Investigating craters

Open Meteorites / January 29, 2017

On Wednesday 25th January Simon Sheridan visited Stoke Goldington C of E First School. Simon organised a fun session, in which the children spent the afternoon investigating how the size and speed of meteroids (that’s meteorites before they hit the ground) affect the size and shape of craters. The session was rounded off with the children getting a chance to handle some real meteorites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making an impact

Open Meteorites / May 17, 2016

Simon Sheridan visited Woodford Green Primary School on Friday as part of the Tim Peake Primary Project. Simon’s presentation not only involved showing students the outreach meteorite collection, but also included a crater-making activity. Simon made quite an impact himself, with the Year 5 class teacher Mrs Jones quoted in the Guardian* as saying: “It was a real once in a lifetime opportunity for the children to speak to someone like Dr Sheridan who makes space robots and can show them what Mars looks like. It’s really got them thinking seriously about science – I had one Year 4 pupil come up to me afterwards and say ‘I’m going to work really hard in maths so I can be an astronaut when I’m older.”

Read more about Simon’s visit in the Guardian’s website.

Picture credit: Epping Forest Guardian*

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Double Act

Open Meteorites / April 5, 2016

The outreach meteorites made two visits to Ware, Hertfordshire in the last couple of weeks, supporting presentations given by Michael Goodyear. One of Michael’s talks was for the University of the Third Age (U3A) and the other to a local geology club.  In both cases, the talks were not specifically about meteorites, but about what meteorites can tell us about the origin and structure of the Earth.  The U3A talk examined how the Earth formed and so Michael used the meteorites to show what the primitive raw materials from which our planet formed may have looked like. He also gave a basic introduction to meteorites e.g. types, jargon etc.  His talk to the East Herts Geology Club was on the structure of the Earth and so again, he used the meteorites to illustrate how we have access to material that made up the early Earth, and also how iron meteorites can provide an approximate sample of core material.

Image: Ware, Hertfordshire. Gazebos from the south bank of the River Lea (Wikipedia)

 

 

Parliamentary Showcase

Open Meteorites / March 14, 2016

The OU’s outreach meteorite collection was one of the star attractions at The Open University’s Parliamentary Showcase in the House of Commons on Wednesday 9 March. The event, attended by MPs, Lords and Senior Civil Servants was an opportunity to showcase the science and education benefits of space science research at the Open University. The event proved to be a big success, with lots of positive feedback from everyone who came to talk to us about our ongoing research activities.

Image (Top): Open University Vice-Chancellor Peter Horrocks (centre) chats to Iain Gilmour (left) and Ross Burgon (right) at the Parliamentary Showcase

Images (below): Professor Sally Jordan talking to visitors at the Parliamentary Showcase

 

Comets and Meteorites in Norwich

Open Meteorites / December 8, 2015

On Friday 27 November Simon Sheridan gave a talk about the Rosetta Mission to the Norwich Astronomical Society at their Seething Observatory. There were well over 100 people in the audience and after the talk he had a very lively hands-on session with the Open University outreach meteorite collection. The audience were extremely enthusiastic and the questions came thick and fast. Simon and his audience had a very enjoyable evening.

Simon Sheridan talks Rosetta to members of the Norwich Astronomical Society

More pictures and comments are available here:

https://storify.com/chris_greenf/a-great-evening-at-seething

 

Visit to Porchester Junior School

Open Meteorites / November 25, 2015

On Monday 16 November Dr Simon Sheridan was invited back to his Junior School in Nottingham to talk to the current children about space science and jobs in the space industry.He ran three, hour-long workshops where the children performed experiments to investigate the effect of impacts on the Earth.  The sessions ended with the children being able to look at and handle the Open University outreach meteorite collection.

Students at Porchester Junior School examine the Gibeon iron meteorite

 

You can watch a video about the visit by clicking on the link below:

NOW WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

You can also visit the school website and scroll down to the 16th November 2015 entry to read a short account of the visit by Miss Moore the Class 6 teacher and also read some of the students comments: http://www.porchester.notts.sch.uk/

 

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A New Arrival

Open Meteorites / October 2, 2015

The Chelyabinsk “superbolide” exploded over Russia at 9.20am on 15th February 2013, causing extensive damage and making news headlines across the globe.Huge amounts of extraterrestrial material were collected on the ground in the days that followed this massive explosion. This debris is officially classified as being from the Chelyabinsk meteorite, and has the composition of an LL5 ordinary chondrite.

The debris and vapour trail left after the explosion of the Chelyabinsk “superbolide” Image: Alex Alishevskikh/Wikipedia

But what does this material look like? Well now we have samples of the Chelyabinsk meteorite in our outreach collection. These consist of a 41g partly fusion-crusted stone and five small so-called Chelyabinsk “peas”.

The new Chelyabinsk samples (image: Richard Greenwood)

As can be seen from the image above, the larger stone is highly fractured with dark shock melt veins cutting across the specimen. These did not form as a result of the Chelyabinsk explosion, but are due to much earlier events. A recent paper by Righter et al (2015) suggests that Chelyabinsk shows evidence of up to eight distinct collisional events, ranging in age from 4.53 billion to 27 million years ago.The tiny “peas” are representative of much of the debris from the explosion, which resulted in massive scale fragmentation of the incoming meteoroid.

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A Visit from Wellingborough Schools

Open Meteorites / September 27, 2015

On 23rd September the Open University hosted the annual visit of sixth-formers and their teachers from the schools in the Ogden Trust Schools-University partnership. As in previous years the students visited various research labs and enjoyed a demonstration of meteorites by Roy Adkin

Roy Adkin talks meteorites to Wellingborough sixth-formers 

 

A special set of meteorites visit Walton High

Open Meteorites / March 6, 2015

I took an unusual and rather special collection of meteorites to Walton High (Walnut Tree, Milton Keynes), not the usual collection taken to OUTREACH events, which was as exciting for me as for the pupils! A piece of the infamous Chelyabinsk meteorite, Campo del Cielo, lunar and Martian samples and a huge 12 kg, as yet unclassified, ordinary chondrite from North West Africa were amongst the specimens shown. I took the pupils through the formation of asteroids and planetesimals, explained how we get metal, metal/rock and rock meteorites, the types of analysis performed on them and even discussed the origins of life from carbon rich (organic compound) meteorites such as Ivuna and Murchison. We are very grateful to Graham Ensor of the British and Irish Meteorite Society (BIMS) for the loan of these exciting specimens.

Roy Adkin

 

A very busy morning at Pendragon School

Open Meteorites / February 16, 2015

Armed with the case of outreach meteorites in one hand and balancing the small Philae model in the other, I carefully shuffled through the snow to Pendragon Primary School to give a short presentation to the whole school during an assembly on meteorites, space and comets. I had just a 15 minute slot, so a bit of a challenge! The excited head teacher welcomed me in and fortunately we had some time for her to handle the meteorites before the children arrived. Her first question to the school, as my introduction, was what significant space event had happened in November to which there was a show of hands and many replies, but it was my 4 year old daughter in reception class who was the one to reply that a spacecraft had landed on a comet, very proud!

Diane Turner shows the meteorites to pupils at Pendragon School (photo: Carol Shaw)

 

The presentation began with photos of the GC-MS instrumentation in the lab and some of the reasons for analysing samples. Moving on to a picture of Earth, I asked which planet this was – there was a large show of hands, asked what Earth was mostly made of there were some interesting answers including grass, we then discussed what we needed to live on Earth, primarily air and water. Next was a picture of the moon and again there was a large show of hands with the correct answer and we discussed man landing on the moon in 1969 and the robot from China that is currently analysing the moon. There was a smaller show of hands for our next picture of Mars and the range of answers for how long it takes to travel to Mars ranged from seconds to years, we then discussed the landers on Mars and what Mars is made of. At this point the lunar and martian meteorites were brought out and the excited children carefully passed them around to have a look. Some of the children also had the opportunity, with help, to hold the Gideon meterorite. The final question was what are comets and how can we find out what they are made of? Which brought us onto discussing Rosetta, Philae and Ptolemy – a miniature version of the GC-MS instruments shown at the beginning of the presentation of the lab and why we want to analyse them.

Pupils answering space quiz questions during Diane Turner’s assembly presentation at Pendragon School (photo: Carol Shaw)

After assembly I stayed on with the key stage 2 children to look at and handle all of the meteorites, as they currently have a project on space. I then moved to the Year 6 classroom to discuss the meteorites and space in general with the older children. There was lots of excitement and relevant questions. As a final test of their knowledge and to get both the children and the teachers thinking about space, I finished my morning at Pendragon School with the quick meteorite quiz, which I’m pleased to say they passed with flying colours!

A wonderful morning, thank you to my attentative audience!

Diane Turner

 

A late evening at the Museum

Open Meteorites / January 30, 2015

On Wednesday evening (28/01/15), Dr Simon Sheridan and I had an exhibit at the Science Musuem’s Lates event. These are themed free-to-enter events held by the museum on the last Wednesday of every month. The theme in January was “Engineer Your Future” an event to encourage engineering in the UK and we were there to showcase the OU’s Ptolemy instrument on the Philae Lander. We were surprised at how popular the event was, with 4310 people attending. It was an enjoyable evening, describing the ambitious Rosetta mission and re-living the excitement of landing on the comet. Many were fascinated and amused by the 3D comet model that we used during the landing site selection meetings, “Chury” the plastic duck. At the end of the evening we handed “Chury” to the museum curators for posterity, it is now a national treasure!

Andrew Morse

 

Dr Andrew Morse (without refreshment! and facing away from the camera) explains the pitfalls and difficulties involved in landing on a comet and then staying on it once you have touched down. (image: Simon Sheridan)

Dr Simon Sheridan (far right) talking to some visitors at the Science Museum’s Lates event. Simon is explaining the engineering challenges involved in constucting the OU’s Ptolemy mass spectrometer, which is part of the instrument package on the Rosetta Mission’s Philae Lander. (image: Andrew Morse)

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