{"id":8555,"date":"2019-10-30T07:34:38","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T07:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/chinese-reading\/china-039-s-first-ever-video-lecture-from-space\/"},"modified":"2019-10-30T07:34:38","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T07:34:38","slug":"china-039-s-first-ever-video-lecture-from-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/vi\/china-039-s-first-ever-video-lecture-from-space\/","title":{"rendered":"China's first-ever video lecture from space"},"content":{"rendered":"
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China’s second female astronaut, Wang Yaping, has delivered the country’s first-ever video lecture from space.<\/p>\n

Speaking to students via live video, Ms Wang used spinning tops, a ball, water and a fellow astro<\/em>naut to explain physics in zero-gravity.<\/p>\n

She was speaking from the Tiangong-1 space laboratory, wher the Shenzhou spacecraft is currently docked,<\/p>\n

China’s fifth manned space mission, Shenzhou-10, is scheduled to end around 25 or 26 June. The crew is also expected to attempt a manual docking later on Thursday.<\/p>\n

This will involve getting back inside their Shenzhou capsule, unhooking from Tiangong and then flying around the lab to re-attach the capsule to the laboratory.<\/p>\n

Ms Yang used difference experiments to demo<\/em>nstrate the co<\/em>ncepts of weight and mass in space.<\/p>\n

After showing how normal scales did not work in space, she used a special scale to measure the mass of crew commander Nie Haisheng, using Newton’s second law of motion – measuring the mass of an object through force and acceleration.
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At another point, to show how objects move in the microgravity enviro<\/em>nment of space, she asked her colleague to help her rotate 90 degrees, and then 180 degrees, from the floor of the laboratory.<\/p>\n

Spinning tops were used to create gyroscopic motion in space, and a ball attached to a string to demo<\/em>nstrate pendulum motion.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the class, Ms Yang made a film of water using a me<\/em>tal ring, explained by the increased surface tension of water in space. She then turned the film of water into a water ball by pouring more water o<\/em>nto it, to wide applause from students watching in China.<\/p>\n

Around 330 primary and seco<\/em>ndary school students watched the lecture from a special classroom in Beijing, wher they could also ask Ms Wang questions through a live video feed, state media said.<\/p>\n

In respo<\/em>nse to a student’s question, Ms Yang described what she could see in space.<\/p>\n

"The stars we see are much brighter, but they do not twinkle," she said, explaining this was due to the lack of Earth’s obstructing atmosphere.<\/p>\n

"The sky we see isn’t blue, but black. And every day, we can see the sun rise 16 times because we circle the Earth every 90 minutes."<\/p>\n

An estimated 60 million students and teachers around China were also expected to watch the lecture live, the Ministry of Education said.<\/p>\n

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