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Graham brown by Graham Brown

Where am I?

@rutzrox by Micaela Rutene

Bat and Ball

We've been practicing our hockey (on Tuesdays with Sharon from Wairarapa Hockey) and bat and ball skills. We've been loving it! Here we are playing a kiwi classic - Bat Down.

Aiming for the bat

Taking a swing

Spot the ball

Where'd it go?

Watch out for this big swing!

The Solar Oven

So while we are in the experimenting mood, we thought we'd give this a go: building our own Solar Oven. Jasper and Eve took on the challenge and built the oven from a banana box, some OHP film, a car sunscreen shade and a whole lot of tape.

Next we put it out in the sun with a thermometer inside to see how hot we could get it to.

When it first went out it was 25 degrees in the oven. About the same as the air temperature. But as the sun shone on it the temperature rose. After only 5 minutes it had risen to 40 degrees. Then in another 5 minutes it was up to 50 degrees in there. This was amazing. Jasper was calculating how many degrees it went up each minute.

Mrs Rutene checked the temperature at 4pm (about 2 hours after it had been placed in the sun) and it was 80 degrees Celsius in there! Wow!

Jasper wondered if it would make a difference if they insulated the lid?

Many students wondered if it would have gotten hotter if we'd put it out in the sun earlier?

How hot do you think we can get our oven?

Sunsmart Sunscreen Experimenting

Thanks to the sun for coming out today because we could do some UVR (UltraViolet Rays) / SPF (Sun Protection Factor) testing.

We had two ways we could test the big variety of sunscreens sent in (thanks families). Firstly we had some handy UV meter watches which changed colour depending on how much UVR was coming down on us. We put our sunscreen over 1/2 of the watches to see what difference it made in colour to each side. This helped us to come to a few handy conclusions:

"The sunscreen blocked most but not all of the UVR."

"It does change colour but goes right back to purple when you take the sunscreen away."

Landon and Lorenzo checking out the UV watch

Lucy testing the sunscreen on the watch

We found out this was a really effective brand of sunscreen. It blocked more UV than the others in our tests.

 After using the watches we tried out the electronic UV meter that Connor and his father built. This amazed us! When the sensor was in the full sun it read between 1200-1400 units. When we held the sunscreen over it, the reading changed to between 200-300 units. 

"Wow! What a difference!"

With the technology we have we didn't notice much difference between the different SPF factors in the sunscreen. The biggest difference was when we put a hat over the sensor. Then it read only 1 unit! We think this means hats give us great protection.

 

The Great Egg and Spoon Race of 2017

Do you want some fun motivation to write? Well do we have a story for you! This week we hosted the inaugural 'Great Egg and Spoon Race' of the Senior Hub. Conditions favoured ducks, however we were not deterred and there were some spectacularly funny moments.