Second Grade Science – Dark Matter, Newton, Ptolemy and Galileo

Alex seems to be migrating from a fixation on weather to a fixation on space. At the local coffee shop (where I get my Chai), there is an issue of Sky & Telescope Magazine that has a cover story on Dark Matter. Alexander saw an television show about Dark Matter with my dad and has been interested in it since. Every time he finds out I’m going to the coffee shop, he mentions the magazine and notes that the story is on page 22 (it is).

So today he sat quietly and read it while Ava and I chatted with the owner and staff. On the way to the car, he mentioned that he wanted to be an astronomer so I shared with him my obsession with astronomy when I was a 6th grader. I created a club called the “Astronuts” and in order to gain admittance to the club, students were quizzed on one of Isaac Asimov’s books. I mentioned Isaac Asimov to Alex and he mentioned Sir Isaac Newton.

I mentioned Newton’s gravity studies and Alexander replied “Yes, his discovery of gravity helped people to believe what Ptolemy and Galileo discussed.” I think I kind of paused in my tracks because that was the last thing I expected to come out of his mouth. I asked him where he had heard about Ptolemy and Galileo as I was quite sure it wasn’t discussed in second grade science.

Evidently the concepts were touched on in the Magic Treehouse nonfiction book, Space, that Alexander has read four times during the past week. So I asked him if the book mentioned Copernicus and he said that it did. He reiterated his desire to be an astronomer and mentioned that I really need to buy him a telescope (he has a star chart and loved his recent visit to the planetarium).

Although I love weather, I’m ready for a new focus for Alex and I’m glad that it is something I know a little about. His first obsession was Star Wars and I was always chastised for not knowing enough on the topic. He moved on to Egypt from there and I knew a little about that. Next came weather, which is something that I knew quite a bit about. Now it looks like astronomy is the next big thing. I’m thankful for changing topics as I know some families deal with the same thing for years on end…we go about a year per topic, not too bad!

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