Xpress, the Coolest Section of the St. Petersburg Times, is the home for features, news and views of interest to young readers. Most of the work in Xpress, which appears on Mondays in Floridian, is produced by the Times' X-Team. The team of journalists ages 9-17 from around the Tampa Bay area is selected every year at the end of the school year to serve during the following school term. The current team of 12 was chosen out of 150 applicants. Watch for X-Team application forms in Xpress during the month of May.
Read the reviews by Xpress Film Critic Billy Norris
Contest is out of this world
By Times Staff Writer
Published March 22, 2004
[Photo: AP]
In this artist’s illustration of Sedna, the most distant known object in the solar system, the sun, at right, appears as a bright star.
My very energetic mother just served us nine pizzas.
Lots of kids learn a sentence like that in their elementary school years. But it's not really about moms overfeeding their kids. It's about planets.
The first letter in each word matches the first letter of each planet in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Learning the sentence is a way of memorizing the names of the planets.
Now we may have a new planet to remember. Recently, scientists discovered a planetlike object 8-billion miles from Earth. The object is smaller than tiny Pluto, but it's still the biggest thing found circling the sun since Pluto was discovered in 1930.
Some experts say this new sphere should be considered the 10th planet. Scientists are calling it Sedna. This raises a question. If Sedna turns out to be a planet, won't we need a new sentence to help us remember the names?
Let's have a contest. Here's what to do: Come up with a sentence that will help people remember the names of the planets, including little Sedna. Your sentence has to be original, so you can't just say "My very energetic mother just served us nine pizzas, sweetheart."
Be creative! Send your entries to A Planetary Puzzler, c/o Xpress, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731. Or e-mail entries to robinson@sptimes.com Make sure you put A Planetary Puzzler in the subject line. Please include your name, age, grade, school, your address, phone number with area code and an e-mail address, if you have one. And please, moms, dads and grandparents, resist the temptation to be a kid again and enter yourself.
We'll print some of our favorites in Xpress. And the winner will get a prize. Good luck!
