1. Arrange students into groups. Each group needs at least ONE person who has a mobile device.
2. If their phone camera doesn't automatically detect and decode QR codes, ask students to
4. Cut them out and place them around your class / school.
1. Give each group a clipboard and a piece of paper so they can write down the decoded questions and their answers to them.
2. Explain to the students that the codes are hidden around the school. Each team will get ONE point for each question they correctly decode and copy down onto their sheet, and a further TWO points if they can then provide the correct answer and write this down underneath the question.
3. Away they go! The winner is the first team to return with the most correct answers in the time available. This could be within a lesson, or during a lunchbreak, or even over several days!
4. A detailed case study in how to set up a successful QR Scavenger Hunt using this tool can be found here.
Question | Answer |
| 1. How is a star born? | (definition:A cloud of gas and dust in outer space)Like people, stars are born, they grow old and they die. Their birth places are huge, cold clouds of gas and dust, known as 'nebulas'. The most famous of these is the Orion nebula, which is just visible with the unaided eye.These clouds start to shrink under their own gravity. As the cloud gets smaller, it breaks into clumps. Each clump eventually becomes so hot and dense that nuclear reactions begin. When the temperature reaches 10 million degrees Celsius, the clump becomes a new star. | 2. Why do stars shine? | Stars are giant balls of glowing gas. Stars shine because the gas inside them is so hot that a process called "nuclear fusion" takes place. Nuclear fusion is where 2 atoms come together (or "fuse") to form a different kind of atom; this process gives off a lot of energy that we can see as light. | 3. How do stars die? | Most stars take millions of years to die. When a star like the Sun has burned all of its hydrogen fuel, it expands to become a red giant. This may be millions of kilometres across - big enough to swallow the planets Mercury and Venus.After puffing off its outer layers, the star collapses to form a very dense white dwarf. One teaspoon of material from a white dwarf would weigh up to 100 tonnes. Over billions of years, the white dwarf cools and becomes invisible. | 4. What is a super nova? | Stars heavier than eight times the mass of the Sun end their lives very suddenly. When they run out of fuel, they swell into red supergiants. They try to keep alive by burning different fuels, but this only works for a few million years. Then they blow themselves apart in a huge supernova explosion.For a week or so, the supernova outshines all of the other stars in its galaxy. Then it quickly fades. All that is left is a tiny, dense object – a neutron star or a black hole – surrounded by an expanding cloud of very hot gas.The elements made inside the supergiant (such as oxygen, carbon and iron) are scattered through space. This stardust eventually makes other stars and planets. | 5. Can you name and describe 2 different kinds of stars? | The Different Types of Stars. The Sun is an average sized yellow star. It is about 1 million kilometres wide and is about 4.5 billion years old. However, when the Sun gets older (in about 5 billion years), it will no longer be an average-sized yellow star. Instead, it will increase in size and become a Giant star, before using up almost all its energy and collapsing into a Dwarf Star. Below is a list of the different types of stars:Dwarf Stars: The nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is a Red Dwarf star. It is a star with a diameter (width) less than half the diameter of the Sun, a surface temperature about 2000 °c to 3000 °c cooler. The Sun is also about 10,000 times brighter than Proxima Centauri. White Dwarfs are similar to Red Dwarfs, except that their surface temperatures are much higher, and shine white instead of red. When the Sun comes to the end of its life, it will become a White Dwarf. It will be much smaller than it is now, not quite as bright but twice as hot. Its matter (particles) will be more densely-packed together. There are also Black Dwarfs. These are stars that we cannot see, which have used up their energy for producing light, but are still closely-packed but still have a strong gravitational pull.Neutron Star(Pulsars) and Black Holes: A neutron star is a very small star, perhaps only 20 kilometres across, which is just as heavy as the Sun is now. Its matter is extremely densely-packed together. When a Giant star collapses as it dies, it causes a huge explosion called a Supernova. This explosion, producing vast amounts of cosmic dust and appearing like another nebula in space, ends with the star shrinking or totally disappearing. A neutron star, which spins very fast, gives out huge pulses of radiation. This is why it is known as a Pulsar. If it does completely disappear it becomes a Black Holes, appearing to suck in objects orbiting or approaching close to it.Average-sized Stars: Most average-sized stars, like the Sun, are about half-way through their life. They have surface temperatures about 6000°c and glow a bright yellow, almost white, colour. They will swell up to become a Giant stars, and then shrink to become White Dwarfs.Blue-White Stars: Some stars use up their hydrogen quicker than other stars. The Sun uses up its hydrogen steadily, and will have a life of about 10 billion years. Stars which burn up their hydrogen supplies quickly are much hotter than Sun-like stars. This heat causes them to glow bright blue, or blue-white. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky after the Sun, and has a surface temperature of about 10,000°c and is two and a half times bigger than the Sun. These hot stars are not necessarily always bigger than the Sun. They are just hotter and shine brighter.Supergiants: An old Blue-white star becomes a Supergiant. They expand, just like average-sized stars expand to become Giant stars. Because they are beginning to run out of hydrogen, they cool down and glow a more orangey colour. A star called Betelguese is extremely old, but also extremely big. In fact, it is 500 times wider than the Sun and would, if it was at the centre of the Sun's Solar System, be big enough to stretch nearly to Jupiter. This giant star will one day collapse in a huge explosion called a supernova and will become a neutron star or maybe even a Black Hole. |
How is a star born?&choe=UTF-8
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Why do stars shine?&choe=UTF-8
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How do stars die?&choe=UTF-8
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What is a super nova?&choe=UTF-8
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Can you name and describe 2 different kinds of stars?&choe=UTF-8
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