Sound investigations with a tuning fork

Sound with Tuning Fork
Monday, 16th June, 2008
We tried touching a vibrating tuning off various objects in class. These are the things we used:
A cup of water, a ping pong ball and string, containers of rice, peas, sand and water.
When we put a vibrating tuning fork into a cup of water the water comes splashing out, but only if the tuning fork goes arms first into the water.
A ping pong ball on string will jump over and back lots of times when touched by a vibrating tuning fork.
Sand, rice, peas and water in containers will jump when the container is touched by a vibrating tuning fork. We can hear the nice note the tuning fork gives too.

Are materials waterproof or absorbent?

Properties of Materials
Are materials waterproof, or absorbent(do they soak up water well)?
Friday, 13th June 2008
These are the materials we tested:
Cloth, sponge, tinfoil, tissue, plastic, newspaper, ourselves.
We found out that cloth, sponges, tissues, and newspapers soaked up water really well. They are all absorbent.
Tinfoil, plastic and our hands do not soak up water at all. They are all waterproof. We had fun testing to see which belonged to each group

Award of Science Excellence

Scoil Chaitriona Junior received our 4th Award of Science Excellence last Wednesday. 2 teachers (Ms. McLoughin and Ms.Ferguson)and three children, Rory, Thomas and Eoghan went to GMIT to collect our award. We got to try out some interactive science stalls, had a nice buffet, met Molly Cool, saw a wonderful science show given by 'Splooze'-Sue McGrath, and listened to a nice talk from a famous Irish scientist Eanna NiLamhna. It was a great day and we are very proud of our award. Well done to all who took part this year.

Kite Flying

Kite Flying
Monday, 26th May, 2008
We made kites from paper, paint, skewers, string and fabric tails and bows.
It was fine but windy today so we went flying the kites. It was great fun.
Our kites fly best if we fly them against the wind.

Big Bug

Friday, 23rd May 2008

We found a huge bug in the yard. After looking up the identification key we have decided that it is some kind of beetle - we're not sure what kind exactly but it looks amazing!

Mayflies

May flies
Wednesday, 21st May, 2008
Ms. Ferguson brought us in a box of Mayflies from Lough Corrib. They don't live long. The mayflies with green wings are very healthy. The ones with black wings will die soon.
We put the mayflies on the back of our hands. They were very tame. They sat there nice and happily.

Trees in full bloom

We have been watching these trees all year. We saw that they lost their leaves in autumn, that they had no leaves in winter. We watched their bud bursts in Spring and now in summer we can see these trees in full bloom. Can you tell which one is Horse Chestnut,
which one is Ash and which one is Hawthorn?

Ants in the garden

Ants
Friday, 16th May, 2008
Teacher found an ant nursery under a stone in her garden. The ants had lots of babies in white sacks. When the stone was lifted, the parent ants protected the babies by pushing the sacks of babies into the ant hole. It was an amazing sight.

Bug Hunting

Bug Hunting, May 7th, 2008
One wall in the senior school has a lovely minibeast mural on it.
We find most of our bugs under logs by the wall.
We try not to disturb the minibeasts’ homes too much.
We tried to identify all the minibeasts using an identification key.
We found slugs, snails, worms, wood lice, centipedes, earwigs, spiders ants and milliipedes
We made a tally of all the minibeasts we found.

Lions and Prisoners behind bars

A lion/prisoner behind bars
Tuesday, 22nd April, 2008
Teacher printed out pictures of empty cages, lions and
prisoners.
We cut out a cage each and then stuck either a lion or a prisoner on the back.
We can put the lion/prisoner behind bars by spinning the cage very quickly. This confuses our eyes into thinking that the lion/prisoner is actually behind bars and not on the other side of the page.

Our new school aquarium

Our School Aquarium
Thursday, 10th April, 2008
Our school has got a new aquarium. It has lots of sea water creatures in it.
The fish and animals are fed a cube of frozen squid every 2nd day. Delicious!
If the food is not eaten at the end of the day we take it out of the tank so that the fish are not over-fed.
We have two hermit crabs, a starfish, a sea anemone, an edible crab, 2 butterfish, 2 prawns, a plaice, a blenny, a rock goby and a 2 spotted goby. We spend lots of time looking at our sea creatures and watching them in their new home.