My Outer Banks Vacation Part Four

Hello everyone!  Yesterday was an awesome day.  Yesterday, we turned into NASA pilots and walked on a national historic site.  In one of the comments on my last blog entry, a question was asked about going to Kill Devil Hills.  Now, I did go there.  Answer this riddle and you will find out where I went.

Without this pair, you wouldn’t be flying on a Boeing 747.

Did you guess what it is now?  Or better yet, who?  That’s right!  The Wright Brothers’ Memorial at Kitty Hawk!  Here’s some information about the Wright Brothers.  First, you might want to know that the Wright Brothers didn’t always live in Kitty Hawk.  They actually lived in Dayton, Ohio, as bike mechanics.  They were also geniuses (and inventors) and wanted to actually fly.  Now, at that time, most people wanted to fly, too.  They had built planes and things but they had all failed.  But the Wright Brothers went into planning, unlike other people.  A weather agency told them that Kitty Hawk was perfect for flying their plane, which was built in this shed (well, technically it’s actually a reproduction, the real one must have rotted away years ago.):

The Wright Brothers wanted to be alone so nobody could copy them (man, would that be bad).  They also wanted a soft place to land and also some wind because at first they built gliders and then they built engines with propellors.  Kitty Hawk had all of that so that’s why they chose it.  After we got some information from the Museum, we headed up to the memorial.  (Man, was that tiring!) Here’s a picture of the view of the tower on the walk there:

Wow, isn’t that a view?  Well, anyway, once we finally reached the tower, we stayed there a few minutes before snapping a lot of pictures.  Here is a picture of me and Eli in front of the tower:

Wow, isn’t the memorial big from that angle? Amazingly, the tower (with an estimate) is about 15 stories high.  If you want to see the tower compared to me, you’ll see that I’m a little midget compared to it.  See for sure, here’s a picture of a size comparison:

Wow, isn’t the memorial huge compared to me?  Anyway, here’s some airplane questions:

1. Who disappeared over the ocean and was never found?
2. What’s barnstorming?
3. What does the “prop” in prop plane stand for?

Answer Key:

1. Amelia Earhart
2. Barnstorming is when you fly a stunt plane.
3. It stands for propellor.

Anyway, when I told you at the beginning that we became NASA pilots, I didn’t mean that we went to college and got the degrees and everything. Here is a picture of what I actually mean:

See you tomorrow!

Miles’s Science Encyclopedia Part Two

Astronomy:

Outer space is amazing.  When you think about space, you usually think about the sun, the moon and the stars.  But actually there’s way more to that than meets the eye.  For example, you thought the only planet in the whole universe was Earth?  But actually there are nine planets in our Solar System. 

Here is a color picture of Jupiter.   Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun.  It also has a huge red spot, which is actually a hurricane.  Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System

Now, our Solar System is in the galaxy The Milky Way.  Here’s a picture of a spiral galaxy. The Milky Way looks like it.
 

Not only can you find pictures of outer space on the Internet or in books and such, but scientists are actually launching spacecraft into outer space to get snapshots of The Milky Way.   Here is a picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.  It is part of the Eagle Nebula.

Thank you for reading Miles’s Science Encyclopedia!  Next time, we check out the biggest dig. Paleontology!