Exploring the Stars
– An Imaginary Journey to Cosmos for students of Jr 3

Jointly reported by:
Ng Yan Wenn 17188 Sr1scF
Thian Yi-Ming 16806 Sr2scD

On Saturday, 7 March 2020, the scheduled Learning Activity Day, Junior 3 students filed into the auditorium to attend a physics class much different than before. It was hosted by Teacher Mr Chu Yi Zhi, and he proceeded to give a presentation on introducing the Solar system, as astronomy is included in the syllabus for Junior 3 students.

The lesson opened up with a video stitched together from two movies’ scenes and snippets of actual footage of the Apollo 11 mission. It depicted humanity’s first moon landing on July 20th, 1969 along with Neil Armstrong’s ever-famous quote: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”. As soon as the video had ended, Mr. Chu explained that such a feat was the result of the culmination of humanity’s knowledge and experience, one that spans from Galileo Galilei, the famed astronomer who invented the telescope to Stephen Hawking, the English scientist who was renowned for his contributions to science as well as the scientific community.

Mr. Chu then went on to demonstrate the more accurate ratios of the distance between the sun and planets with the help of volunteers, as well as scaled down models of them using props at hand, just to give the student’s a vague understanding of the solar system’s size. In accompaniment with this, he played a video in which a team of people set up a to-scale model of the solar system and its respective orbits, which cleared up the students’ many questions.

Then the topic of stars’ life cycle came up, Mr. Chu briefed on the aging of stars, nuclear fusion, and how it will ultimately turn into a white dwarf or a supernova at the end of its lifespan. He also discussed about black holes, and how the discovery of its existence was stemmed solely on theories and elimination processes. And to wrap it all up, a video commemorating Stephen Hawking was played, but was disappointingly cut short due to time constraints. Miss Ashley Tan, an alumna of Kuen Cheng High School, came up for a brief announcement about the Malaysia Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020 and its upcoming selection.

So concludes the events of the day, the students, without a doubt, felt enlightened after this different physics lesson, which is a sure indicator that the event was a success.