I am a student at in Uru Mānuka. In 2020 I was a year 9 and in 2021 I will be a year 10. This is a place where I will be able to share my learning with you. Please note....some work won't be edited - just my first drafts, so there may be some surface errors. I would love your feedback, comments, thoughts and ideas.
Text Purpose: Who would be most likely to read this text and why?
Date: Friday, May 28
I would recommend this book to teenagers who take an interest in action and 90's language. I think the book is very suspenseful but it is also pretty violent and involves crime which is where the suspense comes from. Because we see one of the most "puppy" type of characters kill someone. Before that he wasn't innocent either because he had always got jumped and experience bad things. So I definitely recommend this for teenagers up.
For this week's social studies blog post, I will be letting you guys know about what I did today.
Mr. Cairn had decided to do something new and suggest we help out the Eco-Warriors. If you don't attend HHS you must not know what that is. The Eco-Warrior is a club based around the ecosystem. Their goal is to take care of our school by picking up trash in the meantime they stay on school grounds. Once they manage to sustain our school environment they are planning to expand their range.
We were put into around 5 groups we all were given supplies containing a bucket and tongs to use. Unfortunately, we were missed out and didn't get tongs so we compromised and found gloves. We started to pick up trash and garbage around the auditorium there were loads of garbage around there. We mostly found them in the vine bushes under the trees, I honestly think the only explanation. For lots of garbage around there, is because it is the only old part of our school. The auditorium and those bushes were not taken down unlike all the other parts of the school. So that rubbish has been building up over the years and has just been hiding under the bushes.
Stating my thoughts, I would say that it was unexpected and disappointing. When you take a glance at our school you think it's there's nothing wrong. But once you take a closer look you will find that there is an uncountable amount of rubbish. It is embarrassing and disappointing that I am saying this about my school. But unfortunately, it is just the truth so I am glad we have a club like Eco-Warrior trying to change that.
I want people to know that they should help out the Eco-Warrior there's no harm in taking walk and picking up trash. It is not hard or challenging at all, over time when you're around friends it will be fun. We could make this a regular habit by just trying to take care of our own environment. One thing I know is that "What goes around, comes around".
This is my first blog post for this term but also will be my first blog post with my new social studies teacher. His name is Mr. Cairn and he is a pretty good teacher who explains things well, which makes things easier.
Lately, in our social studies classes, we have been focusing on the topic of pollution and the environment. We started off by comprehending a short story about a sea horse, this story tries to get a message through. About pollution in a creative way, this story showed us the more cultural/spiritual side. It mentions...
¨Kids, you must take from the sea only the kai you need and only the amount you need to please your bellies. If you take more, then it is a waste. There is no need to waste the food of the sea. Best to leave it there for when you need it next time. The sea is good to us, it gives us kai moana to eat. It is a food basket. As long as we respect it, it will continue to feed us. If, in your search for shellfish, you lift a stone from its lap, return the stone to where it was. Try not to break pieces of the reef because it is the home of many kai moana. And do not leave litter behind you when you leave the sea.’ Dad taught us to respect the sea and to have reverence for the life contained in its waters.¨
Reading this from the story makes me think of how we really have taken the ocean to our advantage, and we have gone too far.
I have learned many things from watching this documentary made by Ali Tabrizy. Who explains how much the ocean means to him. That is why he made a documentary to show what is happening to the ocean. Not only that, but he is also showing how he is trying to help and prevent pollution.
I have written a bit about the video and what I think of it.
This video has gotten me to think about how there are some people out there who really want to save the ocean. But also that we have so much rubbish and it is just honestly never-ending. The fact that surprised and worried me the most was that the amount of microplastic. The ocean had become 500 times more than the stars in a milky way. I mean I'm pretty sure anyone would have at least tried to count the stars, but it’s way too much. Just by looking at the night sky, we can see it filled with countless stars.
After watching more of these types of videos I'm starting to see how most of us humans are so ignorant. We ignore the fact that we are killing the Earth, we only keep doing this. Is because we are doing the things that are benefiting us and are making us comfortable in the current situation. But we aren’t really considering our future whatever we are doing to the earth. Will come back to us if we don’t stop, in the end, it’ll be our loss. Another fact that I had learned about was that when dolphins and whales come to the surface of the water. They actually fertilize these floating plants called phytoplankton. Which actually absorbs four times more carbon dioxide than the amazon rainforest.
Things we could do to try and reduce the pollution in the ocean, is by using reusable everyday necessities. Like maybe a wooden toothbrush, organic/tote bag, metal/bamboo straws. If we are cleaning out our clothes, with the old one that doesn't look nice. We could find innovative ways to reuse them, maybe, for example, we could make flannels for cleaning the car. There are many ways to be innovative with old clothes. But the ones that you know look nice but you also know that will never wear it again. Find a store where you can donate or give clothes, or maybe to benefit yourself you could sell them too.
Lastly, Mr. had introduced to us a new website called "Happy Broadcast" This website is like a website talking about all the news globally. As you know the news usually talks about the bad things happening to the world. But in spite of this news, the Happy Broadcast is they to cheer you up. The Happy Broadcast talks about the good things happening around the world, for example, people helping the environment. I think it's a great way to learn about how people are out there doing good deeds.
This is my second blog post for science, I had recently posted one about testing hydrogen gases. It should be right under this post, I hope you learn something from my blog post and try it out.
Aim:
To make a metal oxide and observe the difference in properties of the product compared to the reactants.
Equipment:
A piece of magnesium, bunsen burner, safety glasses, metal scissor tongs.
Method:
1. Get yourself prepared in the meantime you can light your bunsen burner, but make sure the flame is orange.
2. Once you are ready turn the flame blue.
3. Hold your piece of magnesium in the scissor tongs. Ensure you are holding onto the very tip of your magnesium.
4. Place the other end of the magnesium in the bunsen flame. (The bolder and stronger flame).
5. When the magnesium begins to burn do not look directly at it, as the light emitted can permanently damage your eyes.
Results:
It resulted in a very bright white light, similar to the light of a light bulb.
Discussion:
When we lit the magnesium it took a while for it to actually start on fire, but when it did we only noticed it. Catch on fire and burn, after a few seconds it started to light up with a very bright light. We all thought it was really cool we got to do it twice.
Conclusion:
Our experiment did work, and it looked really interesting. I was honestly just wondering why it creates a bright light. Instead of catching on fire and burning out, but I did question. Thinking what if we did a bigger piece of metal if we did the light will most likely blind us, or dame our eyes severely.
Hope you've had a wonderful school holiday, this may be a late greeting it is already into week 2 of term 2. This is my first science blogpost for term two and I will be writing about an experiment we had done in the last lesson.
Testing for Hydrogen Gas
Aim:To show that hydrogen gas is produced when a metal reacts with acid.
Equipment:
A test tube, a boiling tube, bunsen burner/lighter, wooden splint, a bottle of acid, a piece of metal, safety glasses.
Method:
1. Light your bunsen burner
2. Add your sample of metal to your test tube. Add 2 ml of acid.
3. Carefully invert the boiling tube above the test tube containing the metal and acid.
4. Hold the test tubes together for a few minutes, allowing time for the inverted boiling tube to fill with gas.
5. When the tube is full, your lab partner should light a wooden splint.
6. Carefully, but quickly, tilt the boiling tube full of gas upward and insert the burning splint into the mouth of the test tube.
Our way:
1. Get all your equipment ready, like your test tubes, wooden splint, lighter, and safety goggles.
2. Fill your smaller test tube with 2 ml of acid (depending on how strong the acid is the louder the pop.)
3. Place your piece of metal into the acid, and quickly put the bigger tube over the tube containing the acid. Seal the gap by making sure you're holding the tubes together tightly.
4. Wait for around 30 seconds at the minimum it can go higher.
5. After make sure your partner has the wooden splint lit on fire.
6. Take off the bigger test tube, and quickly place the lit wooden splint into the big test tube.
Results:
There was big high pitch ¨pop¨ noise. Which honestly gave me a fright.
Discussion:
The purpose of our experiment, just as the title mentions we were testing for hydrogen gases. Before putting the fire in, the acid and the metal were sorts of bubbling and I could see the metal slowly dissolving. While my team member was holding the two tubes together she mentioned that it was getting really warm. This also made me wonder how but it has must've been caused by the reactions. As soon as we put the fire in the "invisible" gas it created a pretty high pitch pop noise. It also made the gas a bit more visible and it didn't really smell pleasant, but that's all that happened.
Conclusion:
The first time we tried to do the experiment it didn't make a pop noise because the acid was too weak. So we ended up using a stronger acid which resulted in the high pitch pop sound, which was better. The sound it made sounded like a sneaker squeaking on a court, and the room was filled with this noise. If I could carry on the experiment I would want to see if the pop would louder. If I used a stronger acid or used a different type of metal, the metal we used was magnesium.
In-home economics, we haven't been doing a lot of blog posts (only one with a few things we had made). But this is because we have been focusing more on in-class projects,
For this term, we have been focusing on three topics, or as I should say 1 with three aspects. ¨taste, texture, and colour¨ are what we have been learning about for this term, next term is supposed to be surprised.
The things we have been learning have also included things about bacteria and the pH scale (how it connects to food).
We have made presentations about these topics and have decided in groups what we will make. That regards to the ¨taste, texture, and colour¨ concept, we always need to make sure we add this to match the criteria.
Having taste, texture, and color in our dishes is important because we need to make sure that our food has these features. Especially if we ever want to take a career that involves food, these things are important. Because you need to make sure your meal has taste if not then how is it gonna taste good for you to enjoy or even eat. Having texture puts your teeth to use and provide exercise for your muscle in our mouths. Along with color, it´s what makes something appetizing to the eye. Everything that I have mentioned is things about your senses, mainly about your taste and feel.
