A letter to a curious New Zealander

Our school is part of an experiment to see how connected New Zealanders are.

We have to write a letter to a Curious New Zealander of our choice. Then we have to pass the letter onto a random person with the instruction to pass it on to someone who might know the person who might know the person whom the letter is addressed. After they receive it, getting proof with a selfie, an email or something can be good proof that it got there.

I have chosen John Gully from the Everest Treks as my Curious New Zealander because I am really interested in Mount Everest, and also because my friend Jimmy keeps talking about him. I am going to first give my letter to my friend Jimmy because he is related to John Gully (which is why he keeps talking about John.

John Gully

Since there are a lot of postcards in the pile, I get to send a second person.

For the second Curious New Zealander, I have chosen Stan Walker because he is a cool recording artist, actor and TV personality. I'm going to first tweet him to see if he knows anyone that knows him (idea from Corianna), because I need to find out who knows him. Updates may come soon.

Stan Walker

Aluminium boats with marbles

Today, our goal was to build a boat that could hold the most possible marbles, using a piece of aluminium foil. We had to build two boats, and try to improve our design between our first and second boat. My team consisted of Me, Kyle, and Matthew.

Rules

• You may only use a single piece of foil to build your boat
• You may not touch or adjust your boat once it is in the water
• You must add marbles one at a time

Our plan

Type-up of plan

Make a hat boat and drop marbles in.

• Strength: floats because of air pockets.
• Strength: Sides hold the marbles in
• Weakness: It's tin foil.
• Weakness: Sides could fall apart.

What did the boat do?

Evaluate and Improve

A few common problems between all the tested boats are that a few are too small, or the marbles roll around the boat and unbalance it.

Good ideas are deep bowls, and big flat boats that displace water, especially when there are sections to keep the balance.

Our new design

This design incorporated both good evaluations to see if it they went well together.

They didn't.

Strength: Deep enough to hold a few marbles.

Strength: Has sections to make the weight spread out and balanced.

Weakness: IT HAS HOLES INSIDE IT EVERYWHERE

Weakness: Sections take a lot of the material, leaving only a little to use.

Volkswagen take the stroller to a new level

The car company Volkswagen is using the technology in their cars, and making strollers more safer! They are still working on what to put in it, but right now they have a few things: braking so the baby won't get hurt, following the person in front of them and keeping a distance between walls, people and cars.

Air Umbrella

Some scientists have invented a new kind of umbrella... an air umbrella! It is a special umbrella that uses a battery and blows wind out, stopping the rain coming in. If you think about it, it's actually air stopping rain from raining on you. Cool huh?