Science Badge Work

Dani has been busy working on her Science Badge for Astronomy.  Here you can find out about her visit to the Carter Observatory in Wellington.

Dani's visit to Carter Observatory

She also had to write a story about Space.  Here it is.

Many people think I'm crazy.  I don't.  I am a talking monkey about to drop into the giant red spot of Jupiter.  The humans are making me do it because they don't want to hurt their perfect little bodies so they send down a monkey.  I had been waiting in this little cage for 921 days, or in other words 2.522 years.  Yes, this is long.  Do you think I am crazy?

If you do well I am doing it anyway.  I will be in the centre of the red spot in just over an hour.  Am I scared?  No.  Yes well I don't know yet.

As I get dropped into the gas giant I fall for about ten minutes and then notice the storm inside the spot is weakening.  Seconds after this I think I see little people.  This can't be true.  There's another and another.  I turn off the high speed cameras and pull the parachute and start lowering to the ground.  Now that I was on the ground there was a whole civilisation here.  Many of them come and greet me.  This was amazing.  I was being greeted by aliens.  Big fat yellow dancing aliens.  Crazy!  After a few minutes the chief or as they called it Bottemferg, took be to his hide out.  He told me that to protect them they make a fake storm to disguise them .  They welcomed me like a god and said that they would love me to stay.  So I stayed.

Many people think I'm crazy but I don't   When I got chucked down the giant spot I found aliens.  That is not crazy.

Primary Science in Focus

A couple of weeks ago the Year 5 and 6 Science Club had a visitor from Radio NZ.  Alison joined in our lesson and recorded what we were doing.  She used our lesson as part of the radio show "Our Changing World".  You can listen to the show here.

The World Up Close

Today the Year 4 Science Club students used the digital microscopes to view the world up close.  We could magnify objects to make them 100x bigger.

It was so cool.

Magical Mixtures Again

This is an old favourite lesson and this week the Year 3 and 4 Science Club joined forces to have some fun.

Mixing the 2 powders together.

Carefully measuring the powders.

Working together to get the mixture right.

Wow!  The mixture is bubbling and the bag is filling up with gas.

This mixture turned green and it got really hot.

Stacking Coloured Water

Today in Year 4 Science Club we learnt how to stack coloured water. 
We found out that water with lots of salt in it is more dense (heavier) than fresh or less salty water.
Some of our coloured water had lots of salt in it.  And some of our coloured water only had a little bit of salt.

We had to figure out which colour would float on top and which colour would sink to the bottom.

Sharnia learns how to trap the coloured water in the straw.

First we tried two colours together to see which one would float.  We recorded on our sheet a tick if the colour floated on top.

The boys were really good at this.

Next we had to work out which order to put the colours so they all stacked on top of each other.  Louis was the first to figure this out.

Jackson got it too!

What colour is a black marker?

Today in Year 4 Science Club we were learning about what colours a black marker pen is made from.

First we cut out a circle of filter paper and cut a tiny hole in the middle.

Then we put a wet pipe cleaner down through the hole and into a cup of water.

We watched to see what happened.

We saw that the colours started to separate out of the black ink and spread out onto the paper.

 Where did the colours come from?  

 We think that the colours came from the black felt tip pen.  Black is made from lots of colours mixed together.