Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Star of the Show! : Part 1



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Hey again! Today I have a brand new tinker crate about Fiber Optics.

FIBER OPTIC STARS
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 The materials for this experiment are....
  •  Battery pack
  •  Batteries
  •  Resistor
  •  Red jumper wire
  •  LED light bulb
  •  Illuminator box
  •  Sticky foam
  •  Sheet of constellations
  •  2 Foam sheets
  •  Pushpin
  •  White crayon
  •  Optical fibers (As many as I needed.)
  •  Glue pen
  •  2 Zip ties
  •  Scissors

First I put the batteries in the pack. Taking the resistor and the scissors, I cut both wires on the resistor in half. I connected it to the red jumper wire and the battery pack. Then bending the LED wires, I connected the longer end to the red wire and the shorter end to the black.

Now that the light was done, now for the box. There were 3 parts, A, B, and C. 
A = Front Flaps
B = Back Flaps
C = Side Flaps

I folded the A and B flaps inwards. Then I folded C's flaps in to keep those flaps inwards. I locked the Left flap by folding up the guide pieces upwards. Taking 4 pieces of foam, I placed 2 pieces where the battery pack goes and 2 where the wires go. I placed the battery pack in the box, there was a little hole where the switch went, so the pack had to be lined up evenly. Taking the wire ends that were connected to the resistor, I stuck them to the foam. I also positioned the light bulb so it was poking through a hole in one of the first guide piece.

To complete the fiber optic stars, I needed to make a constellation! I put the black foam on the tinker crate, and the constellation sheet on the black foam. The constellation sheet had a bunch of constellations on it that I could choose from. I chose Orion the hunter, so I lined up the sheet with the foam and used the pushpin to punch out the stars for my constellation. Taking a bunch of optical fibers, I stuck them in the holes one by one on the backside of the foam. I used a crayon to make the picture in the stars. To make sure they stayed in the holes, I used the glue pen to make a circle of glue around all of the optical fibers. After they dried, I lined up the ends of the fibers so they were even. Then I attached the fibers with a zip tie and cut off the rest off. To keep the fibers in place, I put a little bit of glue in between the fibers. Once that dried, I secured the fibers in the box and closed it. The constellation was complete! I turned it on to light up the stars.

 STAR STORIES
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Constellations aren't just pictures in the night sky. They tell stories from ancient religions and places.
This is a story from Navajo, North America, it's called " The Changing Bear Maiden." A long time ago, a maiden had married a bear. One of her sisters found out about the marriage and told her father about it. He was so mad that he killed the bear. The maiden couldn't "bear" it, so she turned herself into a bear and killed her family one by one. Her family turned into stars and made the "Ursa Major" constellation.

My favorite story, "The Story of Andromeda," is all the way from Ancient Greece. Long ago, a goddess named Cassiopeia, proclaimed herself the prettiest creature ever! This made Poseidon, god of the seas, mad because one of the creatures in the sea were the sea nymphs, which were extremely pretty. He sent a sea monster out and wouldn't take it back unless she took back the statement, but she didn't. As punishment, she had to sacrifice her daughter Andromeda to the monster. As Andromeda was chained to a rock, the monster was drawing near. She could do nothing but wait. Then, as the monster was getting closer, Perseus came out of the sky with Medusa's head in his bag. He turned the monster to stone and saved Andromeda. Perseus married her and lived happily ever after.


This story, " The Story of the Seven Sages," is all the way from Ancient India. It is about the big dipper. Each star was a sage. The seven sages were married to seven sisters, and they made one big happy family. One day, the god of fire came along and saw the girls in the sky. He fell in love with all of them. He went for a walk in the forest to try and shake it off. Instead, he met another girl named Svaha. She fell in love with him. To capture his affections, she tricked him by disguising herself as each of the seven sisters. The Sages were fooled by the trick as well, but they found out the truth.The seventh sister loved her husband too much, and she didn't want to be imitated. Angry, they sent the sisters to another part of the sky, except for the seventh, she stayed with her husband and they lived happily ever after.

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Hope you enjoyed the post. Please like and comment. In the next post, I'll have two more stories to tell. Bye guys! <3
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