THE STORY of PLUTO
Venetia Burney Phair’s contact with the 1st/2nd grade students in Ms. Jeannine’s class,
Venetia Burney Phair’s contact with the 1st/2nd grade students in Ms. Jeannine’s class,
Steel Elementary School.
2006
Jeannine, currently a 5th
grade teacher, reads the Tuesday Science section of the New York Times with her
students first thing every Tuesday morning, something she's done for the past 8 years.
Jeannine knows how and what to
read and how to raise discussion and activity about its contents with her
children.
Here’s an extract from one article she read during
the afternoon of Tuesday, September 12, 2006, that developed into a wonderful and rich correspondence between the students and Venetia Phair, the girl who named
Pluto:
PLUTO’S
EXOTIC PLAYMATES
By
Kenneth Chang
September 12, 2006
With a quick vote last month, the International
Astronomical Union decreed that Pluto was no longer the ninth planet, but just a dwarf planet — and not even the largest dwarf
— orbiting in a distant ring of icy debris.
But perhaps that should not
be seen as a slight to Pluto.
For many astronomers, that
ring of icy debris, known as the Kuiper Belt, has become an exciting spot for
innovative research and has changed how they view the solar system.
When Jeannine read this brief article aloud to her class, she knew right away that it caught the children's curiosity by the number of hands that flew into the air, followed by question after question.
That night, Jeannine did some research. She uncovered the delightful story of the young girl who, many years ago, gave Pluto its name. The following day Jeannine shared what she had learned with her children:
Frozen and lonely, Planet X, circled the earth unnamed.
It got one thanks to an 11-year-old British girl
named Venetia Burney, an enthusiast of the planets and classical stories.
29 Jul 2005
On 14th March, 1930, eleven year old
Venetia Burney was sitting down to breakfast at her home in Oxford. It was a wet, cold and cloudy day, and
her grandfather, Falconer Madan, was reading The Times
at the table.
Knowing of his granddaughter’s
interest in science, he read a section of The Times out loud:
A NEW PLANET
DISCOVERY BY LOWELL
OBSERVATORY
(From our correspondent)
NEW YORK, March 13
Professor Harlow Shapley, Director
oft
the Harvard Observatory, announced today that the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff,
Arizona, had discovered a ninth
major planet. The ice-covered planet, which
has
not yet been named, is beyond Neptune.
It is probably larger than the
Earth, but
smaller than Uranus.
The discovery confirms the belief
of
the late Dr. Percival Lowell that such a
planet existed and was in fact the
result
of a systematic search of several years in
support of Dr. Lowell's
belief. Professor
Shapley calls the discovery the most
important since the
discovery of Neptune
in 1846.
Not long before, young Venetia Phair had
been on a nature walk with her school where they'd laid out the planets to
scale. Venetia learned that the planets were all named after
mythological figures, and that Neptune and the new planet were far, far away.
When her grandfather finished reading the story, Venetia thought for a minute, scratched her head, then quietly she proposed to her well-connected grandfather that the new planet be named Pluto, after the Roman god of the underworld.
Mr. Madan liked the idea and wrote a letter to his friend Herbert Hall Turner, professor of astronomy at Oxford.
Pluto, he suggested, was an excellent name for “the big obscure new baby.”
Mr. Turner, as it happened, was in London for a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, where word of the new planet had members buzzing, and proposals for a name flew fast and furious.
Professor Turner wrote to Mr. Madan on his return. “I think PLUTO excellent!!” Professor Turner immediately sent a telegram to the scientists who had discovered the new planet.
“Naming new planet, please consider PLUTO, suggested by small girl Venetia Burney for dark and gloomy planet.”
Scientists at the Lowell Observatory were excited about the proposed name and voted unanimously for Pluto, partly because its first two letters could be interpreted as an homage to Percival Lowell. On May 24, the new planet received its official name.
Mr. Madan was delighted that his granddaughter's recommendation had been agreed and gave his granddaughter a five-pound note. He felt proud that he family had added yet another feather to its cap: in 1877, Mr. Madan’s brother Henry, a housemaster at Eton, had successfully proposed that the two dwarf moons of Mars be named Phobos and Deimos, two attendants of the Roman war god, whose names mean fear and terror.
Venetia grew up to become a
teacher, and married a mathematician called Maxwell Phair.
She currently lives in Epsom,
and was 85 last year.
Cite: Palmer,
S.B. (2005). "Venetia Burney
and Pluto", in: What Planet is This?
Archival URI: http://inamidst.com/notes/venetia
From Jeannine's journal:
One Tuesday in
early fall, I read an article to the class about Pluto and the demotion of
Pluto’s planet status. The children were
immediately curious about how Pluto had become a planet in the first
place. That question led us to a book
called The Kid Who Named Pluto and Stories of Other Extraordinary Young People
in Science ( McCutcheon, 2004).
In this
book, we discovered the name Venetia Burney, an eleven year old from Oxford,
England, who in 1930, suggested the name Pluto for Planet X, discovered at
Arizona’s Lowell Observatory. Venetia
chose the name Pluto, because of her interest in mythology. Pluto was the Greek god of the dark and
distant underworld and the brother of Jupiter and Neptune.
The questions that
instantly followed were, of course, when you’re working with six, seven and
eight year olds is…”Is she still alive?....How old is she?...Where does she
live?...Did she grow up to be a scientist?”
We went to the internet and searched Venetia Burney. Up came an article on BBC News on line The
Girl Who Named a Planet, (Rincon, 2006).
It gave a detailed account of the conversation on the morning of March
14, 1930 around Venetia’s breakfast table that led to the naming of the
planet. We also learned that Venetia
(now Phair) had grown up to be a teacher and lived in Epsom, Surrey, England.
With that
information in hand, the children then wanted to write to Ms. Phair. We discussed the idea of a letter---but soon,
our thoughts turned to writing about all the things that the children wondered
about in Science. It would have to be a
book….something we had also become quite expert at in our classroom. Over the next two weeks, the children wrote
and illustrated Our Book of Big Questions that chronicled the biggest of the
big questions…”What was before anything?...even before the earth…even before
the dinosaurs? (Anika). “I wonder how
the whole universe was made?” (Pepijn).
“How did land form?” (Bryce).
On September 20, we
carefully wrapped the book up (after making a second copy to keep in our
classroom), sent the book off to a general delivery address in England, and
collectively, held our breaths.
She hoped that the Post Office in England would help........
They did, they certainly did.
With a high sense of anticipation, Jeannine slit open the envelope in front of the children and read Venetia's letter:
 |
| The kids were SO excited to received this! A handwritten letter from the girl who named Pluto. Venetia really liked the book the kids had made for her. |
The letter was so personal, referring to many of the children by name. Venetia described the day, when, as a young girl, she named Pluto.
The correspondence between the class and Venetia continued up until Venetia's sad death.
The correspondence between the class and Venetia continued up until Venetia's sad death.
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