My Transition Year: Science Trip

11th, Nov, '14

Today after our first three classes we went on our science trip to the zoo and to Dunsink observatory. We left at 11am to the zoo. Once we arrived it had started raining. We were given question sheet and sent on paths to go around to the animals and answer them. Then whoever got all the questions right went into a raffle for ten euro. Me and Bronwyn were eager to win. We saw lots of beautiful animals and actually learnt some new things about them that I didn't know before. The flamingo's and seal's habitats were being renovated so we didn't get to see them I love the seals and was disappointed that I didn't get to see them, but at least now I have another excuse to go and see them again once their pen is finished being built. The baby elephant was so adorable. We also got to see the meerkats in the restaurant there and Bronwyn got a brownie, which was delicious. At 2 o'clock we went into the educational centre and had a sort of quiz where we learnt about the food chain and how some of the animals are endangered and could collapse the food chain. It was very interesting. Then when this talk was over a small group of us went to see the giraffes and zebras at the other end of the zoo. It was absolutely lashing rain and we got soaked. We had to go back to the bus early because nobody wanted to go around in the rain and there were massive puddles in the way also. Everybody else was on the bus when we got to it. I really enjoyed the zoo apart from all the rain, it meant that it wasn't busy and we actually got to see the animals.

After the zoo we went to Blanchertstown shopping centre for some dinner. They had a build a bear there which I had to look at and they had all of their Christmas stuff in which was so cute. Then me and Bronwyn went to McDonald's for something to eat. It is a very big shopping centre and they had really cool Christmas displays (even though its only November) We were glad for a rest in a dry warm place.
Then at 6p.m we left for the observatory.

When we arrived the bus had a hard time trying to fit through the gate so we got off and walked up to the house. This was better because the building was very beautiful and it had stopped raining. When we went in they weren't quite ready for us so one of the men there told us all a love story of two of these gods I can't remember. It was a lovely story. Then we went into a big room and another man gave us a lecture about telescopes. The room we were in was very tall and once was home to a telescope and the roof could open. It was very interesting to see. He told us about the rosetta telescope that was to land on an asteroid the next day which was a very big step for science, it also cost a lot of money, something like 1.8 billion euro or more. After the talk we went outside to the bigger telescope which was in a dome like house. It was very cold inside to stop temperature change from damaging the telescope. We got to see the roof open. I was disappointed that we didn't get to look through it because there were too many clouds and a lot of light pollution. But the man said that the telescope weighed as much as a single decker bus but the engineers who made it were so marvelous because they designed it so that it could be moved around with very little force. He also told us that the telescope had its own foundations seperate to the floor so that it wouldn't shake no matter how much you stomped around. The man described how it was used to tell the time and this time was sent to other places, including the docks, all around Dublin. The man who invented it (it was someone Grubb) owned a factory that made telescopes and it was very funny because he had to pay a jewlers to set his watch to the right time (the jewler wouldn't let him see the clock), but Grubb didn't like the fact that he had to pay for the time that he had worked out from his inventions, so he got one of his workers to sprint down to the town clock and back so that he could set his watch to the closest minute. I found this very funny because he had to pay for his own time. I also learnt that every telescope is unique because it has to be made specially for where it is going to sit along latitude. Dublin is something like 53.something degrees north and it is very important to get the angle right on the foundations down to the last point of the degree. Also when it was first discovered that you could tell time with telescopes, it meant that the east of Ireland was a couple of minutes ahead of the west and Ireland was 25 minutes ahead of England so it was very difficult for trains to work out times, so eventually they decided to set all the clocks the same. This was very funny. After we saw the telescope we went inside for another lecture on astronomy and how starts are born and die. I found some of this interesting, other parts were boring. A lot of people weren't interested in this. Some of it was also very confusing for young teenagers like us.
We finally left for home at 9:30p.m. I was very tired by the time we got home at 11pm. It was time for a nice, dry warm comfy bed.
I am very interested in cosmology and would love to go back to the observatory on a clear night and learn more about the universe. It is a very beautiful place.