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rolandlinda3
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 01/24/06
Posts: 2233
Loc: Crozet VA 22932
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A friend of ours from Florida (Ted) is working with girl scouts on astronomy observing. He uses simple 4 inch tiles (the rough side) and gives each person a little play dough. He shows them a map of the moon, picks a crater, makes a rough version on the piece of tile that includes an inner peak and a couple mountains around the rim, then runs a flash light from one side to the other to show what happens. They get all excited, do the same thing, then go observe the real thing. It is a great exercise, which he also showed me in five minutes.
We are going to do the same thing in a conference in NJ but also make them sketch what they see when they actually observe the moon (with either a 4 inch refractor or an 8 inch SCT).
Has anyone done anything similar to his exercise and tried using any other material...wet sand, dough, or anything else.....and what were the pluses and minuses??
Second exercise:
We are thinking of using a picture of a galaxy then having them try to recreate it using cotton (combination of cotton balls and those ball pulled apart to make strands. It is all to give them a taste of going further in their seeing of an object than just a guick glance. Anyone ever tried something like this or used any other material?
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Roland
Sketches in members galleries: rolandlinda3
Inspirational stories/sketches at:
www.christworksministries.org
Edited by rolandlinda3 (07/30/09 11:02 PM)
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Erix
Toad Lily
Reged: 12/25/04
Posts: 22358
Loc: Ohio, USA
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Hi Roland,
Rich introduced something like that to use a few years ago. Here's the link if you'd like to look over what he did.
Some benefits of it could be:
1. Really studying the objects you're creating, heights, depths, central peaks, crater walls, subtle unevenness of the terrain, etc.
2. Practice calculating central peaks on the crater's you create? Or taking even a step further and actually trying to get the estimated scale right on the whole sculpture.
3. Take to star parties for the public to explain the terminator and how it affects the views over a short period of time.
And here's my attempt at using the clay after Rich's tutorial.
link to clay crater . I always meant to have another go at it, only at the eyepiece, but never did. Someday, it would be pretty fun to do so.
Anyway, hope that helps with your project.
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Erika
Automatic doors make me feel like a Jedi. 
Zhumell 16", 10" LX200 Classic,Orion ED80, ETX70-AT, DS Maxscope 60mm
My CN Gallery * 2007 July - tracking NOAA10963
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kraterkid
Post Laureate
Reged: 03/07/05
Posts: 4551
Loc: Jacumba, California
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Roland and Erika,
Consider this wild coincidence: I hadn't given much thought to creating a clay sculptural sketch (the last one I did was several years ago) until last week when I suddenly got the bug to go get some modeling clay and have another go at it. I was out doing the observation and when I finished with the sculpture, I was amazed when I visited the Sketching Forum to find that Roland had written a post asking about this technique! 
You can find my post about the modeling clay sculpture of Archimedes and environs created the night Roland made this post in the Lunar Observing Forum.
Erika, those are excellent points summing up the value of creating these sculptures. Besides that, it is one of the most interesting and stimulating things I've ever done at the eyepiece of a telescope.
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Rich
My CN Gallery
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Shannon s
super member
Reged: 06/21/09
Posts: 139
Loc: Bartow FL.
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Uh-oh, I see a new forum thread coming. The "sculpting" section.
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4.5" & 12" Reflectors
5" Maksutov
Astroview mount
Orion SSDSI
7x50 Binos
A box of Eps
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rolandlinda3
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 01/24/06
Posts: 2233
Loc: Crozet VA 22932
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Excellent. Convinced me. We are doing it but a little simpler for our group of kids/parents. Thanks for the links.
How about the galaxy formation with cotton or the like...anyone tried it??
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Roland
Sketches in members galleries: rolandlinda3
Inspirational stories/sketches at:
www.christworksministries.org
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kraterkid
Post Laureate
Reged: 03/07/05
Posts: 4551
Loc: Jacumba, California
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Yes I did that too Roland, works great and kids really love it! I did a "guess the media" type series of posts and the receipiant won the coveted qupee doll.
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Rich
My CN Gallery
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rolandlinda3
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 01/24/06
Posts: 2233
Loc: Crozet VA 22932
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Rich, other than just pulling the cotton apart for the galaxy stuff, did you try to stiffen or anchor the cotton in any way.....or did you try to put any color in the mix?
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Roland
Sketches in members galleries: rolandlinda3
Inspirational stories/sketches at:
www.christworksministries.org
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kraterkid
Post Laureate
Reged: 03/07/05
Posts: 4551
Loc: Jacumba, California
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Roland, all I did was staple a piece of black craft felt cloth to a 8" x 10" x 1/16" rectangle of pressboard, you can pick up both at a crafts store. The cool thing about the black felt was that you could completely pull your cotton ball apart and then slowly and methodically build up your nebulae or galaxies by simply pressing the strands into the fabric of the felt. Works great to form comets as well. I suppose you could glue it, it's just that it's a bit messy when trying to do a presentation.
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Rich
My CN Gallery
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rolandlinda3
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 01/24/06
Posts: 2233
Loc: Crozet VA 22932
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Great idea that works...that's what we will do.
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Roland
Sketches in members galleries: rolandlinda3
Inspirational stories/sketches at:
www.christworksministries.org
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