Mr. Buchwalder’s Astronomy class completing a telescope scavenger hunt challenge
By Matt Buchwalder, Science Teacher
Our Astronomy class spent the period today doing a telescope scavenger hunt. Scattered around the turf and dorm area were little signs with parts of a message written on them. The students had to aim and focus their telescopes to find the clues and put the message together. Some of the clues were so far away and written so small that students had to change lenses on the telescopes to read them.
Lincoln Academy has a large enough collection of telescopes that each student had their own to use. Many of these telescopes have been donated to the school by people in the community. A few of them are powerful enough to see “deep sky objects” like galaxies and nebulas.
Learning to use a telescope is hard. It takes a lot of practice to get comfortable with the different features of each type of telescope. It’s even harder in the dark at night. I showed the students the basics about how to use the different types of telescopes and then sent them out by the Math Wing to try them out. Every 10 minutes we switched telescopes so students had a chance to try many of them out.
At the end of the period, most of the students had successfully completed the scavenger hunt and decoded the message to get the reward… astronomy themed candy from Fernald’s.
