Space Dust for Science Sunday

We're in the middle of painting, and rearranging the children's rooms this weekend, so we kept our experiment for Science Sunday pretty simple.

I read on a couple of different sites, that you can find tiny bits of meteorites in your own backyard, using only a piece of paper, and a magnet.

Before bed last night, we sat out two pieces of white paper, in different spots in the yard. This works best on a clear, windless night, and you need to weight the paper down, so it won't blow away.

This morning, we brought our papers in, being careful not to lose any of the bits of dirt, and dust, that had accumulated on them during the night. When we passed a magnet over them (our magnet is pretty strong), the little pieces of meteorite (which contain iron), jumped up to the magnet.

I brushed them off into a pile, and let the children examine the space dust closer.

I really wasn't expecting it to work. It just sounded too easy. So, I was as surprised as the children, to see the little space bits, jumping up to the magnet. Of course, it's just frosting on the cake, that we had They Might Be Giants' "What is A Shooting Star", on hand to listen to (if you're curious, click here).

For more fun with science, check out this week's Science Sunday link-up, at Adventures in Mommydom.

It's great to be a homeschooler.