Walk on the Wild Side - with a robot

One of the highlights of the Trumps Science Tournament was to command Mariot to walk with you around a pre-determined circuit.

The Trumps Science Tournament 2016

Cockle Bay selected two teams from interested Year 3 and 4 students to complete in the Trumps Science Tournament 2016.  Of the twenty teams that attended the tournament, Cockle Bay Year 4 team came a credible fourth while Cockle Bay Year 3 team competed strongly for the first time against other Year 3 and 4 teams.  The most important thing in the tournament was to share your scientific knowledge with others and enjoy 'doing' Science with like minded students.

Feeling somewhat trepidous at the start of the competition.

Feelie boxes

It was interesting to see if you could use your sense of touch, and not sight, to work out what was in the feelie box.  These boxes are popping up  in science tables all over the school with different objects inside.

When you take the lid off, you can see if your calculated guess was correct or not.

Here is a small selection of different objects you could try in a feelie box.

Cleaning up oil spills

As part of our Coastal Capers unit, we looked at how oil spills can be cleaned up.  We made classroom model of a coastline with salt water, feathers and shells. Then we poured in vegetable oil to model an oil spill at sea, such as the Rena disaster.  We tried cleaning the oil using detergent and various cleaning materials such as toothbrushes, wool fleece, steel wool, tinfoil, cotton buds and cotton.  It was slow,  painstaking work but we found that wool fleece with detergent was the most successful combination.

Investigating resistance

Still with the Olympics in mind, the Junior Science Club investigated how the lack of resistance made objects move faster or further with less effort.  This concept is particularly important to high performance athletes who wear special clothing to reduce drag to an absolute minimum to enhance their performance.

We used hair dryer to observe how balloons, with their smooth rounded shape, moved effortlessly through the air.

It was interesting to see if a cardboard tube could direct the flow of
air more efficiently and make the balloon go even higher 

Neuroscience experiment to test reaction times

In preparation of the Olympics, the Senior Science Club tested their individual reaction times.  We used an on-line baseball play-off game to measure our reaction time when batting.  Then we conducted a simple test to measure reaction time when catching - we measured  the delay in catching a ruler when dropped randomly without warning.  We measured the drop in centimetres and then converted it into seconds using a conversion chart so we could compare our individual scores.

Kea scientists

The Kea Assembly was hosted by three very knowledgeable scientists who were able to explain many interesting scientific facts about dinosaurs.