Science Fair

Science Fair is fun!
Well - it should be anyway.
You will all complete an observational drawing in class.
You may do the photography as anoptional extra - this could be in place of the wallchart.
You must do a wallk chart explaining how a "home appliance" works, unless you do photography or one of the other more tricky categories.
If you want to avoid the wallchart category in favour of an investigation or technological innovation, you MUST follow the instructions and seek advice from me. I strongly recommend that you think carefully before attempting this option with the time that is remaining to you. A detailed, dated log book is essential.
We have discussed it all at length. You have written instructions.
You must bring your completed work to school on the first Monday to show me BEFORE you glue anything onto your A2 coloured presentation paper.
It is COMPULSORY.

What are you doing?

What are all the Room5ians doing? I have had several highlights - visiting my grandparents on ANZAC Day and having a really amazing date for my wedding anniversary.
What are you doing for your holiday?
Today I am following my chickens around wondering why they aren't laying, planting winter crops in the vege garden and walking the dog. To show how sad my life is, i just got excited over the idea of buying a new bail of barley straw to use for the chook house and the garden...

I bet your Kakepuku stories are coming along nicely - if you have written any on your blog, say so here so we can go and read it for you.

Term Two will start with finsihing our Kakepuku sotries and our digital stories about HamiltON.
After that we will be doing lots of maths, science and different styles of writing. Science fair is coming up too so get thinking about interesting topics... not things like "which fabric softener works best" or anything boring like that.

:-)

giant sea scorpion!

wow - glad these don't cruise the beaches during summer.... [excuse the sexist title]

BBC news reports:

"Man-sized sea scorpion claw found"

How the creature compares for size with a humanThe immense fossilised claw of a 2.5m-long (8ft) sea scorpion has been described by European researchers.
The 390-million-year-old specimen was found in a Germany quarry, the journal Biology Letters reports.
The creature, which has been named Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, would have paddled in a river or swamp.
The size of the beast suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought, the team says.
The claw itself measures 46cm - indicating its owner would have been longer even than the average-sized human.
Overall, it exceeds the record for any other sea scorpion (eurypterid) find by nearly 50cm.
The eurypterids are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of modern land scorpions and possibly all arachnids (the class of animals that also includes spiders).
"The biggest scorpion today is nearly 30cm so that shows you how big this creature was," said Dr Simon Braddy from the University of Bristol, UK.
It was one of Dr Braddy's co-authors, Markus Poschmann, who made the discovery in the quarry near Prum in south-west Germany.
"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realised there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab," he recalled.
"After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw. Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out.
"The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilise it."
Super-sized meals
The species existed during a period in Earth history when oxygen levels in the atmosphere were much higher than today.

The fossil was locked in a siltstone from the Carboniferous PeriodAnd it was those elevated levels, some palaeo-scientists believe, that may have helped drive the super-sized bodies of many of the invertebrates that existed at that time - monster millipedes, huge cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies.
But Dr Braddy thinks the large scales may have had a lot to do with the absence early on of vertebrate predators. As they came on the scene, these animals would have eaten all the biggest prey specimens.
"The fact that you are big means you are more likely to be seen and to be taken for a tastier morsel," he told BBC News. "Evolution will not select for large size; you want to be small so you can hide away."
The scorpions are thought to have made their first scuttles on to land about 450 million years ago.
While some would have taken up a fully terrestrial existence, others like Jaekelopterus rhenaniae would have maintained an aquatic or semi-aquatic lifestyle.

congratulations to the science fair participants

please leave comments here regarding your own successes and those of your classmates. this years effort was the best i have seen.
8>)