Year 8 students visited the National Space Centre in Leicester where they had an ‘out of this world’ experience. Highlights included the Gemini and Soyuz spacecrafts, the Patrick Moore Planetarium where they watched an astronaut training movie, a live Science show with flying plastic bottles and the rocket tower.

‘The trip to the National Space Centre was great! We were all buzzing to go inside and when we did everyone was in awe. We were greeted by the Soyuz and Gemini space crafts above our heads and astronaut outfits to our right. The Gemini spacecraft was used for NASA training and Soyuz for the soviet space projects having been used for 140 flights. We next visited the Sir Patrick Moore Planetarium to watch a half-hour award winning movie and to say the least it was immersive. It taught us the basics of astronaut training. An interesting fact is that: astronauts use a really large pool with space tech and they replicate the nearly zero gravity under water to a level where you neither sink nor float. Next, we watched a live Science show called “It IS rocket science”. After talking about Newton’s Laws of Motion, the presenter took a gutter drain cut in half and put some ethanol in an empty plastic bottle shook it around for a bit.  Then she said, “You might want to cover your ears”, lit a lighter next to the bottle and there was a whoosh and the bottle flew across the room. This works because ethanol is EXTREMELY flammable and it becomes a gas when shaken. When lit it reacted with the oxygen and as stated by Newtons 3rd Law ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction’ so the gas inside go out the only exit and propels the bottle forward. After the presentation we ate lunch, visited the gift shop and spent time in some of the other galleries and rocket tower. ‘

Isaac, Year 8