This week the Enviro Avengers had a visit from Avana and Oscar who are health engineers at Fisher and Paykel. They came in today and started teaching us about solar panels and how they work. We learned that solar panels are made out of multiple cells that generate electricity, the cells act like plants where they extract power from the sun to create energy. We had multiple discussions about the types of energies like kinetic energy and potential energy. After, we split into 2 groups and they showed us how the solar panels would work, they attached alligator clips into a small lightbulb and connected those wires back into the solar panel and then put it into sunlight, powering the light bulb. Most of us were amazed because we don’t really see how electronics works, we mostly see an on and off switch instead of a power source, though there wasn’t anything to store the power so it stopped glowing when we took it out of the sunlight.

After Avana and Oscar showed us their absurd lemon power generator that used five lemons to power a single LED, we were all in awe of this machine since we never knew that this could even be made. Oscar explained that the zinc covered screw would cause a chemical reaction between the acidic lemon and the zinc which will generate electricity into the screw, then a copper wire would conduct that electricity into a LED which would eventually power it with enough lemons.

Oscar then gave us some lemons and a copper wire and some zinc covered nails and he told us to make what he made. After making it we attached the lemons together and plugged it into a LED and to all of our surprise it lit up, After some more questions from The Enviro Avengers Oscar and Avana eventually left.

After lunch we started researching things like batteries and how solar panels work. We all learned a lot this week and we are looking forward to future sessions.

In week 10, 2020 the Enviro avengers experimented with a small windmill made with a motor, wood, paper clips and cardboard. They connected alligator clips to the motor, then onto a voltmeter to measure the voltage generated from the ‘windmill’. They then put it in front of a fan or a hair dryer to make it spin, thus creating power. They then put their data in a worksheet and did the questions on it. They were also visited by Oscar and Ivana who helped them out when they were doing their project. 

After Lunch they then were shown by Mrs Hansen a wind turbine and solar panels and how much they cost and how they are set up, when discussing they decided to have a vote on which power they should use. When the vote was at a tie (well sort of it was 7 to 8) they decided they should go and ask Mrs Fowler and Miss Gifford to sort out this vote, they sent 2 people to go and ask them. After a small conversation and vote they decided that solar power was the best thing to use. 

While writing this the rest of Enviro Avengers are writing a mini 3 paragraph blog about what happened today, this is also the last meeting for Enviro so they all have to wait for next year for the next meeting and that’s when the next blog is going to be posted. 

See you next year!

In week 7, 2020 the Enviro Avengers went to the Coromandel Waterworks Park, we all enjoyed playing around with the water, swimming in the extremely rocky place in the pond and squirting each other with water cannons. We learned about how they got all the water and how they recycled the water. What makes this park unique is that everything in it is recycled, all of the cannons, water systems, squirters and other things are all recycled. Below you can find everyone’s reviews on the trip, what they enjoyed and what happened on the trip.

I thought Waterworks was a really interesting place. I learned a lot about the catchment, which is a stream that makes plants grow with nutrients from the river and the sea. I still remember when we changed into our togs and went into the part of the pond, it was extremely rocky and I didn’t enjoy it that much. In

Also, we played on some water cannons, that was the best moment of my trip, we had a bunch of fun squirting everyone but I still don’t get how we turned it.

Another very interesting and enjoyable part of the trip was this boat race type thing that was extremely fun, at first I thought that the person who started first would be in first place, but boy was I wrong, there were a bunch of obstacles that made it more interesting and enjoyable.

Even though there were some annoying parts where some people would trigger a lever and the water system would squirt you soaking wet, sure it was funny but your clothes would say otherwise. They were also these interesting things like a little wheel  that played music, everything in this park was extremely innovative and wacky, but I’m surprised that they even made this as I’m sure that this was extremely hard to make. As soon as  I arrived at the entrance my  eyes lit up, it was absolutely amazing all of it and I was not let down. The two and a half hour trip was one hundred percent worth it. Also there were two bikes that  you could squirt into the pond and another turning water gun where you could fire at duck signs.

While doing all this, you don’t waste a lot of water, because when using say the canons, some of the water that you use goes back  into the river and the process goes on and on. The water will also never run out as it will always have rain water to fill it back up when it gets short on water. The place it was in was absolutely beautiful, it was surrounded by nature, trees, grass and birds. There were flying foxes too, though I was too chicken to go on them. We ate at the Waterworks park cafe and the food was extremely good in my opinion, the toastie I ordered was amazing.  

Overall this trip was awesome, it was followed by great people and the people who made the park put their hearts into their work and you can see that with your own eyes, the dogs that followed us were so friendly and I totally recommend that you come here and see for yourself.

-Arthur C  

This week the Enviro Avengers had a visit from a member of the Sustainable Schools named Pragna. She is currently planning the ‘Eye on nature’ program which will be hosted on the 22nd of March. Pragna came in and taught us about the water cycle, she taught us things like how water evaporates and turns into the clouds that we see and how snow can mount and flow water into the sea which will eventually flow into the ocean.

After she brought us over to the garden and asked about our project, after explaining to her she started asking questions like: 

“How can you do this?” or “do you know how to do it?” things like that. We answered her questions and she took out a plastic water bottle with two holes in it. She then poured water into the bottle, and asked us which hole had more pressure, and we chose the one closer to the top. Pregna then gave us 2 tubes and got us to hold it and showed us that water doesn’t go up naturally. She then told us to try and ‘throw’ the water up the pipes which obviously didn’t work. 

She then took us down to the old Weka classes and showed us the location of our barrel and how it will work. She showed us a tube connected and how it was flexible. She explained that the thicker the tube the more pressure we would need to move it up which was a learning moment for most of us. We then went back into the shade where she gave her closing remarks(aka conclusion to her speech/presentation) and left. The Enviro Avengers then went back to the main school building and continued researching how to move water up into our garden. 

In this week the Enviro Avengers were visited by Michael (once again) and Ivana, we were also visited by Jonathan from comet who took some photos of us while we were doing our thing and figuring out how to collect water and use it to water our plants. 

Before we started, Michael briefed us on what we were going to do. Basically we had to go into groups of three, then he would give us a sheet of paper and we would circle the barrel of water that we would go to and decide our group name. After we would go out and onto either the field near the bike track or the Wekas to find our barrels. We would then get out our sheets and start wondering about the questions on the sheet and start answering them.

The first question asked us to see how we could get water into our tank. Everyone had a variety of ideas that we could all use, until one group suggested that we put gutters onto the roofs of all the sheds and houses (including the large school building), we all thought that this was a great idea and decided to work on what buildings we could put it on.

The next question was how are we going to move the water over to the actual water tank in the garden. Now we are obviously going to use kinetic energy to move the water as that’s how water moves with kinetic energy.

The third and final question is now that you’ve actually moved the water into the water tank how are you going to transport that water into the plants? We then finally decided to use a time system that has a sensor, when the plant gets ‘thirsty’ it will water it with the sprinkler until it gets ‘full’.

This Afternoon we were deciding on what power we would use to get the water over to the plants and to power the sprinkler, we decided on these 3 power sources (also the power can’t be from the city power plant), wind power, pump power, solar power. Everyone picked their own teams and started to get our research started, one group focused on solar power, one group on pump power and one group on wind power. Though we still haven’t figured out which kind of natural power is the best, all the powers seem really good to use and we can just use all of them to be honest, so we don’t have to just choose one. 

This week the Enviro Avengers did more pH testing, today we were visited by Mrs Bebbleman who gave us a new experiment to do. First off she introduced the scientific method to us, a method that all scientists and researchers (researchers involving science) use to experiment on things. Our experiment for this week was: Can we use the gutter water to water our plants? After we got the question we started experimenting. 

We got a worksheet and formed into groups of 2-3 people had started the experiment, well kinda, we first had to plan it out and form a hypothesis, we also had to explain what would be in our experiment and a common experiment explanation was we would test the pH level of our water. We then had to find the variables of the experiment, the variables were: the controlled variable which are things that don’t change in the experiment, the independent variable which were things that do change in the experiment, the dependent variable which is a thing that is measured during the experiment. 

After all that we moved onto the real experiment of measuring the pH level of the gutter water/rainwater. First we tested rainwater which had an average pH level of 5-6, next we grabbed some gutter waste and put it in our water and stirred it and put it in some filter paper which then removed the waste from the water and dropped the water into a cup. We then tested it and it was about the same pH level as just normal rain water, which means that using gutter water won’t affect the plants whatsoever. At the end Mrs Bebbleman showed us an easy way to filter water, first you need to clean some sand, then put some cotton wool in a bottle that is chopped in half horizontally and put the sand in. Then simply just put some water in and there we go, the water is now filtered.

Now in the afternoon we are continuing to do our research on the power we are collecting for the water tank. We are all very excited about our trip to Coromandel waterworks park, which is going to be next friday (aka Friday the 20th of November 2020).

This week the Enviro avengers were introduced to a new weather station. It gives data on today’s weather in a sheet mailed to Mrs Hansen. Speaking of probes, they also experimented with a soil probe to determine the moisture of the soil in the garden.

Enviro avengers learnt why soil moisture matters, and how too much water can drown a plant along with the traditional way to determine soil moisture. We went up to the garden and plunged the soil probe into one of the garden beds. Different spots of the garden bed had different soils moisture percentages, ranging from 12.3% to 96%. 

We were surprised at the differences of soil moisture in certain areas of the bed. Enviro thought that the moisture was going to be evenly distributed, but it wasn’t. The left side of the bed had a higher moisture content, while the right side was rather dry. After doing a few more tests, we went back inside to conclude our experiment.

Enviro Avengers have been finding ways to reduce the amount of water we used for watering our school garden. The Auckland drought presented us with a rather difficult challenge. Conserving as much water as you can is mandatory now, and using hoses is out of the question. This made watering your garden plants much, much harder. What most people do for watering their plants is either putting the cold shower water into a bucket, then using that to water the plants, or using water from different sources such as the dehumidifier, rainwater runoff and vice versa. 

Our school garden is usually watered by the hose, the same as all gardens before the drought. When the drought hit, we were presented with a problem : the garden was at the field, and you had to climb a flight of stairs to get to the garden. Moving water to the garden was now a lot harder, so we brainstormed some ideas. We did have a big empty water tank near the place students ate. That was our main water source, though moving the water from the tank to the field was hard, because the theory of gravity has been proven true. None of us came up with a viable solution to this problem, so we simply skimmed over it.

Currently, we have a trip planned for the 20th of November. We’re going to the Waterworks in Coromandel. A two and half hour bus ride that’s probably going to be worth it. Waterworks is one of the main attractions in NZ, and it’s a theme park centered around water. They get their water from a stream, and are very resourceful with it. They don’t waste much water. Waterworks has multiple activities, including a water cannon shooting range, a water clock, a really big music box that’s also water-powered because why not? Waterworks also has a cafe, and it’s very health conscious, along with an ice cream shop with cold drinks. The gift shop is mostly kiwiana things, nothing out of the usual. 

Overall, we are really excited for this trip, the teachers are making a big deal out of it too. The two and half hour trip may be boring, though it will be worth it in the end. The trip was funded when we started the project, so we don’t have to pay anything. If your child is a part of the Enviro Avengers, all they need is parental consent to go on the trip. Extra information on the site at https://thewaterworks.co.nz.