Science Rundown
Up & Atom G-Stem Fair
Up & Atom G-Stem Fair was held last term and students put a lot of work into their exhibitions. The stands had displays that covered a vast range of subjects: Car fuel emissions, stopping avocados turning brown, artificially-ripening fruit, Autism Awareness, Anorexia: eating disorder, the Sea Vacuum and Chocolate, to name a few.
It was very successful with a large, appreciative audiences having the opportunity to see these informative stands. WELL DONE!
Year 8: Term 4 has erupted into year 8 lives. They will be covering landforms and landscapes; tectonic plates and earth movements. It is an interesting and topical time for these studies as students can see in real time what these shifts cause; the recent earthquakes in Victoria (rumblings are continuing this week!), as well as Crete in Greek and the volcanic eruptions in La Palma in the Canary Islands and Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.
The topic examines the impacts of threats to areas such as the Spit, the Great Barrier Reef and the Amazon Rainforest. Students will also investigate solutions to reverse or slow down these real threats and then use this knowledge to determine long-term and sustainable solutions to keep a threatened landscape alive.
Students had another hands-on opportunity in Term 3 to see what effect temperature had on crystals size formation:
Some students were fortunate to make fossils. If you look really closely at the Pterodactyl, you might see which country they had to visit to do the digs for these fossils.
Year 7 are going ANIMAL this term and will be studying food webs and food chains.
They will be looking at interactions and relationships between animals on our glorious planet.
There will be a bit of exploring going on, where our scientists will be traipsing through the rugged bush and creek bed to find the animals and ecosystems that exist in our school yard and then on to some classification to identify and group organisms.
Interesting Fact
The Australian tectonic plate is the fastest moving continental land mass on Earth. Victoria’s earthquake in September this year was the largest recorded one in Victoria in the modern instrumental era. It was measured at 5.9 and hit near the town of Rawson and was due to the Australian tectonic plate colliding into the Pacific plate to the north and east and the Eurasian plate to the northwest.
The large earthquake was not the last as there have been several aftershocks of lower magnitudes of around 3.0 over this week.