Investigating bridges

We read a really interesting book this morning.

It is called "The Three Billy Goat's Gruff".

In this story the goats have to cross a bridge to get to the really delicious grass.

We started talking all about bridges....what are they made from, why are they used, what shapes are in bridges, how can bridges be made really strong.

We did an experiment to see what kind of paper bridge is strongest.

 We tried just one sheet of paper.  It could hold only 2 or 3 bears.

 The sheet of paper was much stronger when we folded the sides.  This bridge could hold 6 bears.

 The bridge with an arch was a little stronger again and held 7 bears.

 The best bridge was one which had been folded like a fan.

 These are the bridges in order from the worst bridge to the best bridge.

We read a wonderful book about the different kinds of bridges: girder bridges, cantilever bridges, bridges with arches, suspension bridges and bridges that can rise to let boats pass underneath.

 We went for a walk around our school to find a bridge.

We found a great arched railway bridge on the way to Ballyloughane beach.

We looked at the arched railway bridge and we could see semicircular arches and signs that were rectangular, circular, rectangular and triangular.

 We particularly enjoyed standing in the tunnel made by the arched bridge listening the echoes we made with our voices.
We can't wait to begin designing our own bridges next week.

Red cabbage, acids and caring for our teeth

We all like having lovely clean shiny teeth.

We were talking today about how acids can be bad for your teeth. 

But....how can we tell which things are acids or not.

Teacher had some cabbage with her today.  It looks purple but it is called red cabbage.

When you put this in hot water the water turns blue.  It is a pH indicator.

Now all we had to do was add things to find out whether they are acids or not.

We found that lemon, vinegar, orange juice and Sprite are all acids and turn the cabbage water pink.

Bread soda is not (it is an alkali or base) and turns the cabbage water light blue.

Now we know which drinks are acids and we will wash our teeth well after drinking acids in foods.

Here's a great song about brushing your teeth:

Making gloop

We are investigating materials.

Today we were talking about solids and liquids.

We know that solids are usually hard but liquids are easy to pour.

Water is a liquid and cornflour is a solid.

What happens when you put some water into cornflour?

It mixes like custard but is neither a proper solid nor a proper liquid.

It looks like a liquid and it spilled like a puddle onto the floor

BUT

teacher could pick the puddle up like a solid!!!

When you poke the liquid it feels hard like a solid but when you just leave your finger in it your finger sinks through it like a liquid.

If you had a big enough bath you could even run across it!!!

Have a look:

Raw and cooked eggs

Teacher brought some eggs to school. Two were boiled and one was a raw egg. 

 We can tell the cooked eggs from the raw egg by looking at the date stamp on the side. If the date stamp is on the egg then the egg hasn't been boiled yet. If the date stamp is gone then either the egg is boiled or else the egg came from the farm rather than the shop! 

 We can also tell raw eggs from cooked eggs by spinning them.

 Cooked eggs spin quickly and they are very well behaved, they stop spinning when they are asked (by putting fingers lightly on them). This is like a child in the car with his seat belt on. If the egg (or car) stops suddenly then so does the inside of the egg (the child) because the inside of the egg is joined to the outside in the same was as a child will be joined to the car if the seat belt is on.

 Raw eggs are not so well behaved. They are like children with no seat belts on. If the egg is stopped suddenly the inside will keep on spinning (like a child in a car crash who will be thrown through the window if they have no seat belt on.) 

We had fun seeing which eggs were cooked and which were raw!

Waterproof umbrellas

Last week with Ms. Small we did lots of really interesting work on waterproof and absorbent materials.  We especially liked guessing and trying out which material was which.

We made some lovely umbrellas in art, and then we made them waterproof by covering them in cling film.  Here are the finished umbrellas:

 

Science Week show with Steve Allman

We all went to see a wonderful show in the halla with Steve Allman

Click on the links below to see what the show was like:

Explorer's programme

Dr. Noirín Burke came from the Explorer's Programme today to visit our class and tell us all about marine animals and sea life.  

We are so happy to have her, especially this week, since it is Science Week.

Noirín helped us understand that Ireland is an island surrounded by the sea (the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish sea).

We talked about the animals and plants we can find in the sea, then we drew wonderful ocean pictures.  We did a really good job with our pictures.

Noirín had some really interesting things to show us.

She showed us a starfish, and told us that starfish have no blood but instead they pull in  seawater into their arms, and squirt it out when they are finished with it.  They have a little eye (called an eye spot) on each arm, and can regrow arms (called regrowth) if something happens to an arm.  The starfish has a funny stomach.  When he wants to eat something he puts his stomach outside his mouth and into the food (like shellfish) that he wants to eat.  He then makes a shellfish smoothie which he can easily eat.

We got to see a spider crab's old shell.  Crabs have shells outside their bodies and when their shells get too small the crab cracks the shell, crawls out, and then eats its old shell to give him energy to make the new shell harden.  The largest crab in the world is a Chinese Spider crab.  He is huge.

We got to see lobster claws.  One claw looks like a knife and the other looks like a fork.  One is a crusher and the other is a chopper.

We looked at the shell of a Nautilus.  The shell is gorgeous but the nautilus has a really funny face.
We know that there three types of fish

fish with skeletons made from bone (like a seahorse or a snake pike fish)

fish with skeletons made from cartilage (like sharks).  We got to see some shark's teeth and shark's skin

and jawless fish (like hagfish or lamprey)

We got to see some mermaids purses (where  they keep their eggs, which turn into baby sharks)

and we got to see some  cuttlefish bone.

We got to see a whale's neck bone (actually it was 5 bones joined together)

This was so interesting.
We did some camouflage art where we cut shapes out of newspaper.  Then we stuck these shapes onto another piece of newspaper.  The shapes were really hard to see...they were camouflaged!

We got to play a game with these camouflaged pages.  We each got a camouflaged sheet and a pencil.  We had to find the camouflaged shapes.  This was fun!