SECME Awarded Grant for Model Solar System

The Education Foundation of Palm Beach County has awarded a $1,000.00 grant to our SECME club for ‘Planets, Proportions and Pottery,’ an interdisciplinary exploration of art, science, and math. Their scale model of our solar system will encompass public school campuses and community supporters across the county, starting with the ‘Sun’ at Seminole Ridge and expanding to sites at other schools and businesses to give students, parents, and the community a visual understanding of the vast distances involved in space exploration. For this project, students will use proportional mathematics and ceramics construction, working with NASA images to create in clay textures and patterns of continents and craters, then glazing their globes. The finished products, with captions and location graphics, will be viewable (at the appropriate ‘scale’ distance) in display boxes at feeder schools and SRHS business supporters—for example, ‘Earth’ at Lion Country Safari; ‘Mars’ at Loxahatchee Groves and Golden Groves Elementary and Western Pines Middle; asteroids at Pierce Hammock, Acreage Pines, Royal Palm Beach, and HL Johnson Elementary). To model the sun, SECME proposes planting an 86-foot circle of sunflowers in the center of our courtyard.