Paper Plate Education
"Serving the Universe on a Paper Plate"

Activity: The Platisphere for Children

Platisphere- Alkaid touching.jpg (270598 bytes)

This and several other activities from the Paper Plate Astronomy videotape and DVD are now available online as
free streaming video!

(Please see instructions for making The Platisphere first.)

In the children’s version suggested by April Whitt, students draw four seasonal scenes on the background plate that align with a window cut into the starfield plate, which itself has fewer constellations drilled out. This window is positioned just to the right, or east, of Cassiopeia so that the starfield corresponds to early evening hours for the respective seasons. See April Whitt’s entry in the Proceedings of the 33^rd Annual GLPA Conference (1997, p. 155) for a similar application.

Contributed by April Whitt.

GLPA Proceedings, 1997, p. 155 and GLPA Proceedings, 2000, pp. 67-68.

[Note: This activity is included in the Paper Plate Astronomy video/DVD/streaming video.]

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