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.

This week the weather station has finally been set up on the school roof. Thanks to the lovely workers from GutterCare for installing and Mr Jones for the pole.

It is placed really high up, as our school is 3 stories high, so we should get really clear data as nothing can block it.

Today we started to learn how to enter data into a spreadsheet and then make a line graph with some of that information. The station sends so much interesting stuff. It is sent everyday at 2.30 pm to Mrs Hansen. We are working on getting our groups setup and then they will receive the data and do the recording. 

This week we did pH testing. pH testing is a scientific way to find out if a liquid is acidic, alkaline or neutral. If a liquid is acidic then it can start dissolving things, for example our stomach acid, or hydrochloric acid. It can dissolve virtually everything, even metal. The only exception to this is if it’s harder or denser than steel. If a liquid is alkaline then it simply just makes an acidic liquid turn into a neutral liquid, but if the alkaline has a lower pH level than the acid then the acid will turn the alkaline into acid. Neutral is the number seven on the pH scale and neither had the effects of an acid or an alkaline liquid, instead it just doesn’t really do anything. Neutral liquids are normally our rain water but because of greenhouse gases our rain water is now acidic and can create caves by dissolving limestone cavities to create rock. 

We tested the pH of various liquids including soda, water mixed with baking soda, water mixed with detergent, milk, our school’s water, orange juice and tomato juice. Fruit juices had a pH lower than six most of the time, diluted waters were alkalis, soda had a pH of 3.7, milk had a pH of five and water was neutral. Our next experiment was about the pH level of soil. Certain vegetables and plants required a certain soil pH to grow. The range of soil pH for plants is about six to seven. We took samples of soil from three different areas, those being the garden, the field and the bark soil. Once we had all three samples, we mixed them with water and mixed it to dilute the water, then dipping a universal pH strip into the mixture and reading the pH. The soil was up to standard, ranging from 6.5 to 6.7.

Today we had a visit from Oscar and Micheal. They came to help us understand potential and kinetic energy.  This will help us work out how we will get the water to move once we collect it.

Week 10 experiments FP

We did an experiment with balloons moving across the string – The balloons were different sizes so we had to come up with a hypothesis of which would get to the end first. There were mixed views so then we put it to the test. Our first one didn’t work as the straw got caught so we had to adapt the setup. Then we had a wide variety of results due to different variables – now we understand why you have to do more than one test. You need to collect lots of data to make an informed decision.

This week we had Mrs Bebleman back to help us understand fair testing and learn about variables.  This will help us when we start looking at doing some testing of our own.

After learning about variable and testing we did an experiment with rolling a car down different height levels – We needed to learn to time things and we also learned that we each have different reaction times so you need to do tests more than once and then work out an average and try not to change anything.

We looked at checking the instruments we use are giving a reliable result. This is called calibration. We checked the weight of 1/2 cup of water – you had to be really careful to have it on the line and then you still got variations from the different measures on different cups.

After doing this we went for a walk to look at our community water solutions for our stormwater – we walked along to see how it came from our school down to the first stream and then into ponds. It then moves again through piping into the Puhinui Steam which is the beginning of our water heading for the sea. It has to go through the different levels to stop the water flooding in heavy rain and to stop erosion. It also helps to remove any pollutants that might have been introduced.

Week 2   We had a visit from our local scientist Cathy Bebelman

We looked at Auckland Water situation

We went out and looked at the drainage and types of pipes around our school