Thursday, May 29, 2008

The first planting











On Wednesday after school a group of students stayed behind to prepare the ground for today's (Thursday) planting. The ground was pretty hard to turn but we all got stuck and and got in well turned over. Addition of a few bags of compost made for a nice soil ready for planting.






Then today we gathered the plants that had been donated (thanks Colin MacPhersons, Oderings & Palmers) along with a number of plants we had grown up from seedlings in our Trees for Survival Unit. With the skies blue above us and the sun on our backs we planned and planted out our garden, transforming a once barren plot, to a beautiful native garden.







We can now look forward to the big Arbor Day planting on Sunday the 15th June when we will plant more of the Trees for Survival plants at Pit Park.


Thursday, May 22, 2008

The Coke & Mentos Explosion - Revealed

With CREST projects underway I have attached a link to a useful You Tube clip showing how the Mythbusters team explored the main ingredients behind the Coke & Mentos fountain. They make great use of controlling their variables, so it is well worth a look.

Myth Busters

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

A particularly interesting topic


We have started into term 2 by looking at the "particularly" interesting topic on the Nature of Matter. We have been discussing the arrangement of particles in solids, liquids and gases and how this affects their properties. We have then extended these basic concepts to discuss expansion, contraction, diffusion, pressure and changing states. The picture above shows one of the experiments we did looking at diffusion of colour (from pebbles) in water.