Plastics - a video

The Magnus Effect/Force

We had some special visitors with us today. They are part of the Royal Society Science Leadership Programme and came to see how we do Science at our school.

They helped us with a tricky experiment trying to get cardboard tubes to fly. You could try this one at home
You need:
A strong table
elastic (about 1cm width) 2/3 the length of the table (un-stretched)
A cardboard tube - try different lengths and weights
Tape (or someone's finger to hold the elastic down)
Some room for flying objects!

What to do:
Attach the elastic to the edge of the table and stretch the elastic out to the other end of the table. Roll it 6-7 turns onto the centre of the tube (The first couple of turns to trap the elastic onto the cardboard)
Wind it as though it were a carpet carpet you were going to roll out, in other words, the elastic needs to leave the cardboard on the underside of the tube.
Now hold the tube at the centre and let go. The roll should take off and curve upwards as it travels across the room

(After lots of experimenting we finally succeeded!)

(When Mr Stuart and I tried this a few years ago!)

Here's an explanation from the Physics Girl

Online Citizen Scientists

Mrs B is working with some other teachers in town and a small team to see if Online Citizen Science can help students become more engaged in Science.
As part of her project, she invited Victor Anton to come and show us his project about investigating what animals/birds are around different areas of  urban Wellington. He uses special 'motion detecting' cameras in specific places and these are set up with the web.


We can be helpful citizen scientists by helping him identify things in his photos - he has over 50,000 of them!

You can help too - Identify New Zealand Animals

Stixplosions!

Here's a fun STEAM activity we did in Rimu time today - all we used were Popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and blocks. Potential and kinetic energy - great stuff!

Try this at home! Stixplosions

Pest Free Tawa - Night Tour of Zealandia

A small group of us were very fortunate to go on a Night Tour of Zealandia as a reward for all the rat trapping we've been doing lately. What a treat!

Multiples of 4

We've got a maths challenge going on at the moment looking at the multiples of 4 - and using the pattern with the ones column to help us recall it quickly.



4,8,2,6,0,4,6,2,6,0,4,8,2,6,0,4,8,2,6,0,4,8,2,6,0
4,8,12,16,20,24,28 32......100!

How fast can you recall this? Have a go - Use this online time to time yourself


Get a Stopwatch like this or make your own! At: Online Stopwatch

How Wolves changed Rivers

Part of our ecosystem study -

3.14 (or 14 March) = Pi Day!

We were introduced to the irrational number "pi" today - being March 14.

It's a number that goes on and on and on!!

 

We matched up each digit with a colour and made a 'pi chain'. 

Look how far we got (sort of sitting in a shape of 'pi' too!)

Questionaut

This is a fun problem solving site - cant access it from Chrome though. Mozilla works! (and maybe others?)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks2/games/questionaut/popup.shtml

Wringing out Water on the ISS - for Science!

Miss O'Connell - Te Araroa Walk

Miss O'Connell (who taught at Hampton Hill last year) is walking the whole of the South Island - on the Te Araroa Trail, raising money for Hohepa Canterbury, a charitable organisation supporting those with intellectual disabilities.

Here is her website - along with blog.

We have been following her and keeping in touch with her. Today we were excited to get a video from her

We sent back a video of us singing Ma te mahi Kaora. Hope she likes it! (Have put this on our seesaw page as well)

Tracking tunnels and bird feeders

We've laid tracking tunnels around the school last Friday to see what pests are out there. These tracking tunnels had an ink strip on them for collecting foot prints and a dollop of peanut butter in the middle.

On Monday we collected them in to see if we had any footprints. They all had some!

We found hedgehog and mice/rat foot prints (Pretty hard to distinguish!)

Next thing to do is set traps in these locations for the mice and rats.

We also hung up our new nectar feeder that has a sugary syrup in it. (Brought it in for the storm passing through, but will have it back out there as soon as it passes.)