Farwell, Pluto

After much discussion, astronomers announced yesterday that Pluto is no longer classified as a planet.  In a time where it's common to hear of companies downsizing, it's surprising to hear that our solar system has been downsized.  What will be next?  Will geographers come with facts and figures and declare that Antarctica is no longer classified as a continent? 

Pluto has been a planet since it was discovered in 1930.  The International Astronomical Union voted yesterday to downsize the solar system to eight planets.  Now all textbooks, encyclopedias, charts, and films will be to be revised.  Teachers this fall will have to even revise their lesson plans for astronomy homework - they'll now have to tell the students to put only eight planets in their solar system models.

It seems like yesterday I was at the kitchen table trying to put my solar system model together using the suggested styrofoam balls, toothpicks and modeling clay.   I can't remember if it was fourth or fifth grade, but I had to make a model of the solar system.  I was disappointed that I couldn't make an erupting volcano out of clay and paper mache, but I decided to make the best looking solar system model that I could.  I decided that I would have Grandpa spray paint the styrofoam balls different colors.  Putting a can of spray paint in the hands of a fourth grader was not a good idea - even as I kid I knew that. One thing we didn't know was the fact that spray paint, if sprayed on too heavily, would eat up the styrofoam balls.  After looking at a couple of the styrofoam planets, they had eroded and had craters.  At first I wanted to just throw them away and paint new ones.  But Grandpa and Dad told me that the erosion spots would make the "planets" look realistic - my planets would have craters.  Sounded good to me. 

I remember looking at the other kids' models - some put their models inside of a cardboard box or even a smaller shoe box, and had their planets hanging by string.  We decided that the toothpicks were too small and too short, so Grandpa got a hand full of the long fireplace matches and we used those instead of toothpicks. I walked down to the little store two houses down the street from us, and asked Mr. Nelson the owner for a thick cardboard box.  I wasthe only kid in the class that had used a Sterling beer box for their solar system.  We turned the box on its side, and put little mounds of modeling clay on the inside of the box.  In case you're not following this,  I stuck the long matches into the stryofoam balls, and then stuck the other end of the matches into modeling clay that was on the cardboard.  And there you have it: fourth grade Puddin's model of the nine-planet solar system.