Science Infoblog

FIRST stands For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. Two teams from Green Bay attended a Robotics boot camp yesterday and today their robots will be in competition with more than 30 robots from other schools. They were given some instruction and ideas by a team of students from California….. and then asked to build their robots.

Both teams had their robots up and running within and hour and by the end of the day were training how to beat other teams in todays competition. We have future robotics engineers at Green Bay…..next step designing a robot to explore Mars perhaps?

During your geology course you will have found that igneous rocks form large crystals when they are allowed to cool slowly and small crystals when they the cool fast. When a volcano spews lav out into the ocean volcanic glasses (obsidian) or special formations called pillo lavas can result.

Pillow lavas form when molten rock comes in contact with cold sea water. Toothpaste shaped tongues of lava are squeezed away from a large feeder tube. We can see this happening around Hawaii today. Kilauea burst into life about 500,000 years ago and has been pumping huge volumes of lava into the ocean ever since. There is evidence to suggest that similar activity was responsible for producing rock structures at Te Henga on Auckland’s west coast. The volcanic region that existed then must have matched the size of the Ruapehu massif which has been around for the last 250,000 years

If you head towards the southern end of Te Henga beach the rocky cliffs are mostly quite spectacular formations of pillow lavas. They originated in the same way Kilauea produces them now. They lie on top of slightly older volcanic conglomerate.

Now try the quiz if you are really bored and don’t have a life.

<a href=”http://www.mystudiyo.com/act69605/mini/go/te_henga_beach_rocks” mce_href=”http://www.mystudiyo.com/act69605/mini/go/te_henga_beach_rocks”>Te Henga beach rocks</a>

How much have you learned about metal chemistry. Test your knowledge with this quiz.
<a href=”http://www.mystudiyo.com/act65948/mini/go/reactions_of_metals” mce_href=”http://www.mystudiyo.com/act65948/mini/go/reactions_of_metals”>reactions of metals</a>

As part of their coursework a class of year 11 students had to imagine that they were in a newsroom reporting on increased earthquake activity around Auckland. This seismic activity had finally culminated in the disastrous formation of a new volcanic cone within the Auckland City limits. While students were working on their project the Auckland City Council civil defense planning team were doing an exercise testing their ability to cope with the real thing.

The videos show learning in progress and by themselves are not an outcome .

In the first video a scientist is being interviewed about the causes of the disaster.

and seismic activity shook the newsroom around in the second

The final video in the series rocks!

The winner of the video award will be announced shortly.

Another intrepid band of students doing scientific research at Piha