Yuyu’s Space Lab.
See what’s in tonight’s sky over Cebu. Wave at the space station. Fire Newton’s cannonball into orbit. Weigh yourself on Jupiter and race a beam of light to Neptune. Then do real experiments at home, the way scientists do: guess first, then test.
Made for Yuyu, a young scientist in Cebu who asks big questions. Keep asking them. Every great discovery started with someone who wanted to know why. — Scoop
What can you see tonight?
Worked out for Cebu City from where the Moon and planets really are. No telescope needed: planets look like bright stars that don’t twinkle much.
Working out tonight’s sky…
Wave at the space station.
Astronauts live on the International Space Station, about 400 km above the Earth. It flies all the way around the planet every 90 minutes, about 16 times a day. Here it is right now.
Finding the space station…
On NASA’s Spot the Station, search for Cebu. From the ground the station looks like a bright, steady star sliding across the sky, a little after sunset or before sunrise.
Counting down…
Finding the next rocket launch anywhere in the world.
Launch times often change, sometimes at the last minute. Launch data: The Space Devs.
What would you weigh on other worlds?
Scientist’s secret: you are made of the same amount of stuff everywhere. That’s your mass, and it never changes. Your weight is how hard a planet’s gravity pulls on that stuff. Big, dense planets pull harder. On Jupiter we use the pull at the top of its clouds, because Jupiter has no ground to stand on!
How high could you jump?
Race a beam of light.
Light is the fastest thing in the universe: 299,792 km every second. That’s about 7½ times around the Earth in one second. Pick a world and press the button to send light there from the Sun.
If the Sun were a basketball…
Pictures in books squeeze the planets close together. Here is the real size and distance, shrunk so the Sun is a basketball (24 cm wide). Try it with a ball and a long walk!
| World | Its size would be | Like a… | Distance from the ball |
|---|
The nearest star after the Sun, Proxima Centauri, would be about 6,900 km away on this scale: farther than Cebu to Sydney.
Fire a cannonball into orbit.
Isaac Newton imagined a cannon on a mountain so tall it pokes out above the air. Fire slowly and the ball falls to the ground. Fire faster and it lands farther away. Fire fast enough and the Earth curves away as fast as the ball falls, so it never lands. That’s an orbit, and it’s how satellites stay up.
Pick a speed and fire.
Real satellites near the Earth go about 7.8 km every second. That’s about 28,000 km per hour, fast enough to fly from Cebu to Manila in about 73 seconds.
Real physics you can do today.
Scientists always guess first. Before each test, say what you think will happen. Then test it. Being wrong is how you learn something new.
The paper and the book
- Drop them side by side. Which lands first?
- Now crumple the paper into a ball and drop them again.
- Last: lay the flat paper on top of the book and drop them together.
Balloon rocket
- Thread the string through the straw and tie it tight between two chairs.
- Blow up the balloon, hold the end shut, and tape it to the straw.
- Let go!
Make Moon craters
- Fill the tray with flour and sprinkle cocoa on top.
- Drop pebbles from different heights.
- Look at the craters and the white “rays” around them.
The swinging spoon
- Tie the spoon to a string 25 cm long. Count 10 swings and time them.
- Now use a string 1 m long. Time 10 swings again.
- Add a second spoon. Does it change the time?
Make a rainbow
- Put the glass at the edge of a sunny table.
- Hold the paper on the floor where the light lands.
- Move it until you see colors.
The upside-down water glass
- Fill the glass to the top.
- Put the card flat on top.
- Hold the card, turn the glass over, and let go of the card.
Ask a grown-up before you start, and never look straight at the Sun.
How does a typhoon work?
About 20 tropical cyclones enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility every year, more than almost anywhere else on Earth. Here’s how they grow.
Any storms near the Philippines right now?
Checking the world’s storm alerts…
This list comes from GDACS, the alert system of the United Nations and the European Commission. In the Philippines, PAGASA gives the official warnings. When a storm is coming, listen to PAGASA and your parents.
Quick question: what does a typhoon need to get started?
Satellites made by Filipinos.
You don’t have to fly to space to be a space scientist. Filipino engineers have already built satellites that circle the Earth.
Quick question: what was the first satellite built by Filipinos?
Things scientists wondered about.
Why is the sky blue?
Sunlight has every color in it. When it hits the air, the tiny bits of air bounce blue light around much more than red light, so blue comes at your eyes from every direction. At sunset, light travels through much more air, the blue gets bounced away, and the reds and oranges are left.
Why doesn’t the Moon fall down?
It is falling! The Moon is falling toward Earth all the time, but it is also moving sideways very fast, about 1 km every second. So it keeps falling around the Earth instead of into it. That’s what an orbit is: falling and missing, forever.
How do we know how far away stars are?
Hold up a finger and look at it with one eye, then the other. It jumps! Astronomers do the same thing with Earth’s orbit: they look at a star in January and again in July, from opposite sides of the Sun, and measure how much it jumps. Closer stars jump more. It’s called parallax.
What is a black hole?
A place where so much stuff is squeezed so tightly that gravity is too strong for anything to escape, not even light. That’s why it’s black. In 2019, scientists took the first picture of one, in a galaxy 55 million light-years away, using telescopes all over the Earth working together.
Why are there seasons?
The Earth is tilted. For half the year your part of the Earth leans toward the Sun and gets more direct sunlight; then it leans away. In the Philippines, near the equator, the sunlight stays strong all year, so the big change is wet season and dry season instead of summer and winter.
How big is the universe?
The part we can see is about 93 billion light-years across, and it has more stars than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth. Nobody knows what is past the edge we can see. Maybe you will help find out.
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