By TASHA BAILEY

lba011@latech.edu

 

At night they appear in the sky; sometimes people like to cuddle under them and sometimes some can be seen better than others — they are the stars.

The Louisiana Tech University Planetarium hosted an event called “Fit for Space” last week from Wednesday to Friday.

Students from North Louisiana schools in pre-kindergarten through fourth grade attended.

“The planetarium set up this event in conjunction with the Idea Place,” Glenn Beer, director of the Science and Technology Education Center, said.

Beer said the educational students that were at the event tried to teach the students a little bit of every thing, from how to eat right to how to exercise properly.

“The event included four parts: health and nutrition, physical education, outdoor activities and the space event,” Beer, an instructor of curriculum, instruction and leadership, said.

Janice Potter, an employee at the planetarium and a senior elementary major, said the outdoor activities are a project set up with Connie Laborde, who teaches Health and Exercise Sciences 340 and is also an associate professor in health and exercise sciences.

“During HES 340, which is physical education methods, you have to teach a lesson to students about health and exercise, and this is the one that I wanted to do,” Potter said.

In the planetarium, the students were able to learn about stars without waiting for night to fall.

“For this, schools from the north Louisiana area come and see the night time sky through our machine,” Charlie Olsen, student manager at the planetarium and a junior electrical engineering major, said.

Potter said the students had the opportunity to view a few of the constellations, such as Orion and his dog, Canis Major, during the event.

Potter said to keep the students interested, they watched an animated slide show.

“We show a movie about an older dog telling a younger dog about the solar eclipse and how to prepare for one if it ever happens,” Potter said.

Olsen said if the students behaved during the presentation of the solar eclipse, they were able to go on a “spaceship ride” as a treat, and they all behaved because they wanted to go on the ride.

“The spaceship ride is a view of the stars and the constellations, in slow and then fast motion,” Olsen said.

Potter said the ride makes a person feel as if the seats are really moving, but only the machine was. He also said it moved so fast that it felt like a person’s body was moving and it made people dizzy.

Potter said she loves working for the planetarium.

“I have been working for the planetarium for about five years and there is nowhere else I would rather work,” Potter said.

The planetarium will also host Space Week coming in the spring, which is their big event of the entire year.

The planetarium hosts shows open to the public on the first Saturday of every month.