Since I teach at a NASA school, the science fair is accompanied by a visit from NASA scientists. After showing a short video to the school's kindergartners and talking briefly about the rover, Curiosity, they opened up for questions from the kinder set. That is tricky business. The difference between a question and a story is a fine line in the mind of a 5 year old. When one of my students told the scientists that her mommy's baby just came out, I was glad they didn't understand her. Actually her new baby brother is about a month old now but this is still big news. All the usual questions came up, like what does the sun look like and do people live on the moon? Of course there were several questions about aliens. When one of the NASA guys said that an alien could be really small and have just a few cells, indicating about the size of his fingertip, I overheard a boy say, "Oh, man, that's good, then they can't hurt us." Another questions, "Where does the sun sleep?" brought smiles to the adult faces and nods from other kiddos wondering the same thing.
That was followed by "What is the coldest planet on earth?" And finally, "How many stars are there?" A teaspoon holds about a thousand grains of sand. Combine that teaspoon, that 1000 grains, with all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth and that is about how many stars there are. That is a 1 followed by about 30 zeros. Now that's a lot of stars.
He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by
name.
Psalm 147:4
