Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Two Sixes and a Two

Today we tried to use the numbers 6,6 and 2 to create the all numbers 1-10. We struggled to find ways to make 5 and 7. Can you do it? If you can find a way let me know and you'll deserve a chocolate fish!

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Hidden Wonders of the Natural World

We live in a world of unseeable beauty, so subtle and delicate it is imperceptible to the human eye. To bring this invisible world to light filmaker Louie Schwartzberg bends the boundaries of time and space with high speed cameras, time lapses and microscopes. At TED 2014, he shares highlights from his latest project, a 3D film titled "Mysteries of the Unseen World," which slows down, speeds up and magnifies the astonishing wonders of nature.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Those Amazing Romans

Today, at student request, we played around with Roman numerals. We very quickly became experts at converting between Arabic and Roman numerals on the Fact Monster Roman Numeral Challenge. We also learnt, much to the students' surprise that our "English" numbers are in fact Arabic numerals!

You're A Nerd? So what?

Some of us love reading. Some of us love rugby. Some of us love science. Some of us love music. And sometimes we are judged for the things we love to do. Watch this you tube clip as actor Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation TV Series) responds to a young girl when she asks how to respond to people when they call you a nerd.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Disappearing Shells

Eggs are amazing! Today we investigated the principles of OSMOSIS and DIFFUSION so that we can better understand what is happening in more experiments we have planned. Did you know eggs have a membrane inside the shell?
This membrane allows some substances to pass through while keeping other substances out. This is called osmosis. We experimented with this idea by mixing salt and lentils and then passing them through a sieve to simulate the membrane. Only the tiny particles of salt were able to pass through the sieve.
Next we looked at diffusion. We put a couple of drops of food colouring into a glass of water and watched. When first dropped into the water, the part of the water that shows colour has a high concentration of food colouring. Over time, the colour begins to spread throughout the water to areas with no colour (low concentration of food colouring). Eventually, the colour is evenly spread throughout the entire glass of water.
 

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Chocolate Fish Challenge

Today we used the numbers 5,5 and 3 to create all the counting numbers to ten but just couldn't figure out a way to make 9. If you can use all three numbers to make 9 I will give you a chocolate fish!