ASTRONOMY & SCIENCE QUESTIONS FROM YEAR 5 PUPILS

These are questions posed by Mrs Genders class and answered by Tony

Jackson, a voluntary assistant at the school.

INTRODUCTION• SCIENTIFIC QUESTIONS ASKED BY THE PUPILS OF MRS GENDERS YEAR 5

CLASS• INTRODUCTION.• I have produced this Information Folder for two reasons.• I noticed in Mrs GENDERS Year 5 classroom that the children had placed on

a board on the classroom wall yellow sticky notes. These notes contained Astronomy questions. As Astronomy has always been an interesting subject for me I thought it may be helpful to both the children and Mrs Genders if I provided and gave them my own answers to the questions.

• In addition to providing my answers I could expand them so as to include other information that may be in the children’s Science curriculum.

Source of the questions.

SCIENCE QUESTIONS. ANSWER SHEET No. 3

QUESTION : HOW WILL THE WORLD END?

ANSWER.

There are several scenarios in which life on earth could come to an end:

man is stupid enough to engage in nuclear warfare resulting in lethal radiation. Man continues to pollute the earth to an extent where the conditions become intolerable. An asteroid or similar space object collides with the Earth where the magnitude of the collision

throws up enough debris to block out the sun’s rays. These first three scenarios are subjective and may never occur.

The final scenario is an absolute certainty and nothing can be done to prevent it. This is the natural way the world will end and it will occur in about another 5 thousand million years.

As the Sun burns the chemical reaction converts its hydrogen into helium . When all the hydro gen has been burnt several things will begin to happen. It will cool and swell up to such an extent that the inner planets, Mercury, Venus and our earth will be engulfed bringing about the Earth’s death.

Our sun has existed for around four and a half billion years (4,500,000,000). During this time the Sun has burnt up about half of its hydrogen content. Its remaining hydrogen will last a similar amount of time so there is no cause for alarm yet. The Sun is expected to shine for at least another four and a half billion years