10 Things You Didnt Know About Sputnik

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Rich Tate

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With the 50th anniversary of the first man made satellite making orbit, have a look at 10 things you may have never known.

5. Shortly after its launch, the New York Times explained that the literal translation of "sputnik" is "something that is traveling with a traveler." Additionally, "the traveler is the earth, traveling through space, and the companion 'traveling with' it is the satellite."
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Interesting. I've been watching a special lately on the BBC about the space race.

"something that is traveling with a traveler"--Wouldn't a better translation of sputnik be "traveling companion"?

/I know a fair amount of Russian
 
The launch of Sputnik also caused a major re-evaluation of U.S. education in science and math. It's kind of funny since the early space race is also often described as the race between the United States' German scientists and the U.S.S.R.'s German scientists acquired after WWII. Nevertheless, much of the push to get more science and math into the K-12 classroom during the 1959-1962 time frame was a response to Sputnik. Things like the "New Math", which had been successfully tested in small locales, got ramped up before they had been properly tested in a variety of school environments. Jerome Bruner's "The Process of Education" is a compilation of a major education conference at Wood's Hole, MA that focused on science and math reform.
 
2. The satellite was the size of a basketball and weighed approximately 180 pounds.
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Is that a typo? Would even a ball of pure lead be that heavy?
 
I looked up the stuff on wikipedia (so it's not 100%) but the diameter of the sputnik is about 23in while a basketball is like 10in. Big difference IMO.
 
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