Our Big Bang!

Muritai school has enjoyed a super science week this week with teachers and students involved in science experiments and investigations every day! To celebrate the final day Mrs Ryan and Mr Macmillan organised aGeyser Tube Challenge for the whole school.

Every class chose a student - (we chose Rosie) to pull the pin on a tube of mentos which then dropped into a bottle of coke. 

The resulting acid/base reaction shot a geyser of bubbles as high as 15 metres into the air! 

Congratulations to the winners - Year 5&6!

A very busy term

Term 2 is off to an amazing start!  Here are just a few of the exciting activities the children have been involved in over the past 3 weeks...

Inquiry - Our Changing Earth... The effect of Continental drift on the Earth's crust.

Firstly the children explored what is inside the Earth.  We found out that the Earth is likened to an Egg, in that it is made up of layers of different material.  The inner and outer core, the mantle and the Earths crust. Heres a rap that we listened to that explains it all:

When we understood what is inside the earth we began to explore what is happening on the layer that we live on... the earths crust.  We watched a short BBC film about continental drift, tectonic plates, the layers of the Lithosphere and what happens when plates colide.  We also found out that the continents used to be joined together, this Mega-Continent was called "Pangea" or "Gondwana land".

To further understand how plates move above the mantle we did a couple of experiments. The first experiment we boiled water, dropped in a handful of peas and watched the peas and how they moved. 

Our second experiment further explored how plates can move by demonstrating the scientific process of convection currents using red and blue dye. 

This video shows the same experiment:

Lastly we used slices of bread to represent the tectonic plates and explored the different ways they interact with each other. And that is just what we have been doing for inquiry learning!!!! PHEW.