Sunday 26 June 2016

Light And Color For Science

For light and color, Aria and I we used mirrors and a marble. We put the mirrors in a cube shape then we put the marble in the middle. This made it look like thousands of marbles.

Sunday 19 June 2016

Expecto Patronum (Narrative)

Expecto Patronum! The green light streamed across the forest. “Go, to your destination!” snapped Snape. The sparkling silver doe sped into the darkness of the forest. It was as quiet as a mouse;it weaved in and out of the giant trees. The light shone bright as the moon, it galloped at lightning speed, suddenly stopping as it came to a clearing of a meadow, full of daisies and luscious green grass. He playfully leaped through the meadow, and then he approached the dense part of the forest.


The was a winding path, but in the way was a hooded black finger, who stopped the doe. The large black finger looked just like a hand, with a finger pointed-his nails were as sharp as a knife (all you could see was the nail). The long black cloak trailed behind it like a sinister mist.


“What are YOU doing?” said the voice under the cloak. The doe tried to get past but he couldn’t, the way was blocked by the evil finger “Who are you looking for?” said the hooded finger. The doe, who could not speak projected an image of Harry Potter. “Very, Very Interesting;I know where he is, follow me”, the finger whispered in a barely audible voice.

The doe projected a question mark. “Why are you unsure?” breathed the finger. The doe sprinted away, off the track and into the distance...

Wednesday 15 June 2016

READ ESSAY: How We Could Make Waitaki Plastic Bag Free

What is deadly, you use it just once, often for thirty minutes, it floats away like a parachute and it ends up in the world’s biggest floating garbage dump. What is it? It’s a plastic bag. This essay is about why we shouldn’t use plastic bags and how they affect the environment.  What can we use instead of plastic bags?  Who else has already gone plastic bag free? Around the world we use 1 million plastic bags a minute;and 500 billion plastic bags get used a year!


How do plastic bags affect the environment?
Plastic is non-biodegradable. Plastic is harmful for the environment because bacteria can't eat it and it can’t break down on land or in the water.


Plastic bags get gathered up in the sea, twice the size of Texas! The world's biggest dump is the middle of the pacific ocean, it’s in between Japan and Hawaii, and America and Hawaii. On some of Hawaii’s beaches the beach is full of plastic and most of it is plastic or plastic bags!


Plastic can kill animals; Plastic bags kill more than 100,000 marine animals a year. If the sun gets to the plastic the plastic disintegrates into little pieces and fish think it’s food, eat it and die.  A little fish eats the plastic, then the bigger fish eats the little fish and so on.  We sometimes eat fish that has eaten plastic.  It is a domino effect.  It also strangles animals like birds and animals can swim and get caught up in plastic.


Who has become plastic bag free and how did they become plastic bag free?
Hawaii, Countdown Waiheke, Bali and Dublin are places that are plastic bag free. How Dublin became plastic bag free, was they taxed people. People got fed up with having to pay for the plastic bags so they brought their own reusable ones. By 2019, the UE want to decrease the amount of plastic used by one person by 90 bags a year;and then by 2025 the UE wants to decrease the amount of plastic bags to 40 bags per person, per year.
Two students in Bali have been trying to reduce plastic bag use by education, getting people to use reusable bags and have talked to their government about banning plastic bags.  They are aiming for Bali to be plastic bag free by 2019.  They have a website and Ted Talk.


Why do we use plastic bags? Plastic is easy to make, and you don't need very special equipment to make plastic bags. Plastic in most cases is the best, and most-cost effective way to keep food fresh and protect it from damage.  They are easy for supermarkets to use and they are set up to use them.  Advertisers like to put their logo on them. They are lightweight, easy to carry and you can get rid of them easily (or so people think!).  Shoppers use them, because they can get them for free and they don’t have to remember to bring them to the shop.


What could we use instead of plastic bags?
We could use brown paper bags. One of the good things about brown paper bags, is they are cheap for companies to buy in bulk, which if companies are buying in bulk it would be an average $0.22 per bag. A not so good thing about brown paper bags is, if they put in it wet, damp, or heavy things, they will easily break.


We could make bags! You can use clothes and make them into bags, a good thing about this is you can get rid of old clothes, rather than them going to landfill! We could also use environment friendly bags, baskets, boxes and reusable bags. One good thing about this is that we can fit more things in than a plastic bag, and you only need a couple of bags/boxes than heaps. They are easy to just keep in your car. At Pak’n’Save you can have the choice of buying reusable bags, or using boxes;which makes the boxes have more than one use of just packaging groceries to the supermarket.


For your rubbish bins (or wheelie bins), you can put your rubbish in without a plastic liner and once it goes away to the dump, you clean it out with water and soap.  It won't smell too much. You will have way less stinky rubbish if you recycle your cans, bottles and plastic.


When you go into a supermarket what do you see? Plastic. Not just plastic bags, but almost everything else is wrapped or bottled in plastic. At the back of the supermarket there is acres of shrink-wrap, pallet-wrap and bubble-wrap all used to deliver food.


EPTech has made biodegradable bags. EPTech is based in Tauranga.
They only take 6 months to several years disintegrate, compared to the normal plastic bags that take 50 to 500 years to disintegrate. Their bags can disintegrate in water or on land.


One of the shops that use EPTech biodegradable bags is Garden Fresh Oamaru. They were going to use paper bags but the weight of the pumpkins and large veggies, would rip the paper bag. There was two other types of bio-degradable bags. The biodegradable bags have a small logos on them say that they are biodegradable, if the bag does not have the logo it is not biodegradable. “They do cost more but they are better for the environment” said the shop owner.

Next time you go shopping think about all the plastic bags you get, and what you do with your plastic bags afterwards.  Ask yourself how long they will be in the landfill, or think of the plastic bag dump in the sea, think about how many sea animals you will kill. Then think, all the other options instead of plastic bags.  It may cost more initially to get recyclable bags, but in the future you would be thankful. #Save The Earth

Saturday 11 June 2016

Today I Was Confirmed

Today I was Confirmed! There were 23 of us getting confirmed by Bishop Colin and Father Wayne. Miss Tangney was my sponsor. It was a very special morning.



Neptune Swim Meet! We Are In The Oamaru Mail!


Swimmers show how it is done

June 10, 2016
om10swimming
Oamaru’s contingent at the Neptune Queen’s Birthday meet bagged a huge haul of medals, while several swimmers also qualified for the New Zealand short course championships.
A team of 29 swimmers from the Oamaru Swim Club travelled to Dunedin for the annual carnival, and won 38 medals _ 17 gold, 12 silver and nine bronze.
There were 95 personal best times, and 34 swimmers swam under the qualifying time for the short course championships in Auckland in early October.
One of the standout performers, Alice Petrie won five golds. She won the 200m butterfly, 100m backstroke, 50m freestyle, 50m backstroke and 200m backstroke in her age group, while she also brought home silver in the 100m freestyle, 50m butterfly and 100m butterfly and bronze in the 200m freestyle.
Samuel Petrie also claimed five gold medals, in the 50m, 100m and 200m freestyle, 50m butterfly and 50m breaststroke, and he won silver in the 100m butterfly and 50m backstroke.
Penny Keeling claimed gold in the 400m individual medley, silver in the 100m individual medley and 400m freestyle, and bronze in the 100m freestyle and the 200m individual medley.
Iessha Mansfield bagged gold in the 100m and 200m freestyle, and claimed silver in the 50m freestyle.
Tiana Mansfield won gold in the 400m freestyle and 200m backstroke, and also claimed silver in the 50m backstroke and bronze in the 200m freestyle.
Several others won silver or bronze, or both.
Oamaru Swim Club president Sonya Macdonald said the team’s performance was exceptional. The squad included nine swimmers who had never swum at competition level before.
“It was an amazing, amazing result. “We were definitely showing the other clubs how it was done, and they all commented on how impressive we were in the water and on the sidelines as well.”She put the club’s recent success down to coach Narcis Gherca, who has guided Oamaru’s swimmers for about a year, and had 30 years of coaching experience.
“Before Narcis came on board, we were 12 months without a coach . . . we’ve been through a massive rebuilding stage, but it’s pretty exciting how the results have gone since Narcis has been with us.”

Pilot Essay

What job has the best office view, you can travel the world and you are helping others while doing your job? What is it? My dream job, a Pi...