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I’ve spent most of my spare time over the past two weeks preparing a slide show on the solar system, which I presented yesterday at Slidell Junior High. A good bit of the information I used came from the terrific Nine Planets website, which is chock full of interesting bits of trivia along with all the basic facts about just about everything in the solar system.

While the show was not specifically about Mars, I did manage to squeeze in a bit of Mars lore, mostly in how Mars and it’s oddities (more to the point, explaining those oddities) led us to discover the structure of the solar system, gravitation, and calculus, and to develop better telescopes and observation methods which ultimately led to the HST. I also mentioned that Mars is the most promising body in the solar system for settlement purposes, and why.

It seemed to go over well. The kids were so enthusiastic and had so many questions that I barely made it past Pluto-Charon. This is a good sign, and I plan to do more such presentations in the future.