Gravity and stars

We have taken a fascinating look into gravity and how it influences life here on earth and the universe. It was great to look at some common assumptions we have that are wrong, such as, the heavier things are the faster they fall. We tried an experiment with water and a cup with a hole in it (ask the children) and dropping different weighted objects together. Weight is not the issue when it comes to the gravitational pull. We looked at how gravity is what forms stars, and what holds galaxies, our solar system, earth and us in place. We cause a slight gravitational pull on things too. Anything with mass does. Another wrong assumption is that astronauts float in space because there is no gravity. They experience almost the same amount of gravity as us and are falling, but because of sideways motion around the earth they never reach earth and float instead. A bit confusing at first but we watched some interesting videos to help us understand it.


We also looked at the life cycle of stars and explored nebula, supernova, white dwarfs, neutron stars and lot of other fascinating things in our universe.

Te Pahu Challenge - Wharauroa peak

Well done guys! Challenge complete. It was great to see you all up there on the Wharauroa and Mahaukura peak. Great to see your perseverance and team work. Only two more challenges to finish off - your new hobby presentation and signing off your community service. Some extension for some of you coming up too!

 

Tree Art

The students have been working on some tree art. We spent a number of weeks learning to draw organic looking trees. It was great to see the improvement over the weeks. The students then chose a style of tree and canvas they wanted to create and then completed their final pieces. Well done guys. You have produced some stunning art.

Lower Waipa Athletics

Awesome work on Friday Te Pahu School. There were some excellent attitudes and skills shown on the track and field. Excellent results too - well done!

Wrap Free Wednesday

Our Environmental Leaders, Bradley and Thomas, have set up a school wide Wrap Free Wednesday to try and reduce the amount of daily rubbish the school is producing. It has been running for two weeks now and is a real success so far.

Week 1 - 221 wrappers. 9 wrap free lunches.
Week 2 - 66 wrappers! 59 wrap free lunches!

Well done to our leaders for setting this up and well done to everyone for going wrap free!! Lets keep it up! Two more weeks to go for the school wide challenge, but lets go wrap free daily and forever.

Athletics - Room 7 Flying

PhotoPeach

The Moon

It has been fascinating getting into our inquiry into space. We have been learning just how lucky we are to be alive. There are a lot of factors that go into making our earth habitable. This includes our perfect distance from the sun, our atmosphere, the slight tilt of the earth, the length of our days, and the distance and size of the moon. We have explored the Moon in depth and learnt just how crucial it has been to the earths development and our existence today. Some fascinating facts:

• The Moon is slowly getting further from earth - 3.8 cm a year (they measure this by reflecting lazers off mirrors the astronauts left)
• We only ever see one side of the moon
• The moon slows the earths spin down.
• You weigh less on the moon. There is less gravity.
• The moon has no atmosphere which means no protection from meteors. It also causes it to have extreme temperatures - 110 degrees to 130 degrees. There is no wind or sound up there too.
• They are planning to go back to the moon to create a space station. They have found water on the moon which means they could create fuel on the moon and rockets could refuel and go much further into space if they launch from the Moon
• One man is wanting to put lots of solar panels on the moon as they would be much more effective up there. They would then transport the energy created back to the earth through mirowaves. He thinks there would be enough to power the whole earth!
• The moon has quakes.
• They think a moon was created by an object the size of Mars crashing into the earth and the debri formed the moon. Many in the class thought going back to the moon is a bad idea as humans have messed up Earth and we shouldn't do the same to the moon.