Credits really inspire you people to work, and I was impressed with the work you are producing for this pendulum experiment. I suggest this weekend you do some revision for the mock exams coming up, and finish all the writing that you can for the oscillation length experiment… The more you get done in the weekend the more feedback I can give you in class.
Well its been a while since I wrote here. We are doing this whole pendulum thing, and I know it is Not Very Exciting, but try to keep in mind that by doing the practices and following the feedback you get on your practice runs, the chances that you are going to get four credits out of the actual test is Really High. And although we have a few people in the class that have already got their NCEA Level 1, most of the rest of you won’t mind getting a few more credits.When you are doing your practice runs you need to write the method as though you are explaining what to do to a third former. They know what the various pieces of equipment are, but they don’t know what you want to do with it. So explain carefully and thoroughly, because they won’t be able to ask you questions when they don’t understand. Diagrams are very helpful, but you must label them.
So today was a quick revision of the fourth form topic on continental drift, and a wee look at soil profiles and the history of the land that you can see in the layers under the grass/forest/whatever.Homework is to do the first three questions on geology from your revision book
Some of you have already got some ideas about what you would like to do after you finish school – medicine, music, radiology and so forth. And soon you will be choosing your subjects for next year. These subject choices are provisional, as it depends on what you pass as to what you take, and also the number of people choosing various things might decide if we are running the subject next year. Can I please suggest you go look at some of the university sites to see what the entry requirements are for any courses you are thinking of doing? For instance, the entry requirements for medicine are different at Otago and Auckland, so you need to know which school you are going to when you choose subjects… If you have no idea what you are going to do try to choose subjects that you like, and also keep your options open.
one of the problems I am running into finding resources on the astronomy topic is that they tend to be American, I guess because they are the people that really have a space program. But they haven’t metricated, so they talk in miles per hour on all their sites. Any way… here is a link to a handy and very simple page on launching satellites http://www.gma.org/surfing/satellites/launch.html and note the other bits at the bottom which you might find useful. We had better start doing some homework on this stuff, so look forward to a worksheet tomorrow, for tonight do anything we haven’t done from page 96 to 102. Don’t slay yourselves, just do 20 mins and leave it at that.
Here’s that link to the satellite page: http://www.wisegeek.com/how-many-satellites-are-orbiting-the-earth.htm
For homework do question one on page 96. Please read the answer on retrograde motion at the back of the book for ideas on how to explain retrograde motion… They probably do a lot better than me.
Here is a link to an animation of how retrograde motion works. Please note the bit at the bottom which says the effect when we overtake the outmore planets from us, as opposed to the innermore planets like Venus http://www.scienceu.com/observatory/articles/retro/retro.html
Today we finally started the real astronomy with the planets and the model of the solar system. What strikes me every time I set one of those up is how huge the sun is compared to the planets, and how unspeakable vast space is. Remember that is only our solar system – its a great deal vaster when you start mapping the spaces between the galaxies, or within the galaxies too. If you feel the need to do some homework, do the question 3 from page 76.