Off Beat!

S2 are studying the heart just now so we had a look at an ox heart in biology. At first it looked a bit gory but once we had our gloves on it was fine and we could look inside at all of the chambers of the heart. This one also had blood vessels attached so we could see the arteries and veins.

Not for the faint hearted!

S2 are studying the human body so we went for a visit to the Hunterian Museum to look at their display on the History of Medicine.
Healing Passion draws on the unique collections of William Hunter to cover historical and contemporary aspects of medicine in Glasgow.

Sound Banger's

Experiment:To create a loud bang with paper!

Materials:

you will need-
Asheet of paper about 30 x 40cm

Method:
What you have to do-

1) Fold the longest edges of the paper togethert , and open it out again.
2) Fold down each of the four corners to the first center fold.
3) Fold the paper in half along the first center fold.
4) Fold the paper in half again and then open it out.
5) Fold down the two top corners.
6) Fold the paper back to make a triangle shape.
The banger is ready now.
7) Grip the banger firmly by the two top corners.
Swish it down sharply with a quick flick of the wrist.

Results: A loud bang occurs!


Jessica McAleese S1

Do you do Sudoku?

Well you can play it online here (with relaxing ambient sounds to calm you after a hard day's work).

Sudoku Play this fantastic puzzle game that is taking the world by storm!!

Play this free game now!!

Mr C

Kidney Beans

"What is in urine and how did it get there?" This is the question we are looking at in S2 and today we looked at the structure of a kidney. As you can see we made it a hands on experience! These are lamb kidneys (not for the soft hearted). We looked at the outside blood vessels and ureter and then at the internal structure - you can see this clearly in the pictures above.

Trundling about with trigonometry

It's not just Mr Jewell and his P7 class who've been taking maths outdoors.  Having been banned from climbing buildings due to health and safety restrictions the S3/4 class managed to measure the height of the school using some marvellous maths. 

Deborah can be seen measuring the angle of elevation using a clinometer, Gabriella is working out the distance to the base of the wall using a trundle wheel and I think Craig is writing his memoirs.  

They then had to measure the distance from the ground to eye level as shown by Daniel and Megan below.

Then with the aid team-work (see below), nifty diagrams and some basic trigonometry the pupils managed to work out the height of the building.

As if that news isn't enough here's a bonus song for all our loyal readers.

Melt and Pour Soap Making

S5 have been using glycerine to make soap this week. Glycerin soap is known as melt and pour soap because that’s basically all there is to it. You melt the soap, stir in some additions, and pour it into a mold.

Jason melting the glycerine soap.






Steven added a green dye and lavender fragrance to his soap.



Jennifer pouring the melted glycerine into moulds.



The finished articles.


A little bit of wisdom from Calvin.

Healthy Maths!

Today we were taking advantage of another beautiful day in Greenock to get outside and do some measuring. It is much easier to estimate distances if you have a picture in your mind of how long they are so we set off to the esplanade to measure a kilometre!

What we forgot was that after we had walked one kilometre we had another one to walk to get back! - Hence the 'Healthy Maths' title!
Phew!

Mr J :)

More Murderous Maths!

Another of our P7 book reviewers says:

"I've been reading a book called "Murderous maths: Do You Feel Lucky?" which is all about probability.  I found it very educational and learnt some intresting facts, here are some: 6! x 8! means 6x5x4x3x2x1 x 8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1, which is quite amazing.  I have no criticisms about this book whatsoever and I would love to read another."

Conor P7

Well done Connor, that deserves a brick.

Mr C

P7 go to the bingo!

P7 played multiplication bingo today to practise times tables.  Melissa did well by winning twice with James winning the other game.

Mr C

Holiday Reading: The first review

Oliver in P7 read "Codes: How to make them and break them" over the October holiday.  Here is his review.  "I really liked the "Murderous Maths" book because it's not only fun to read it's also educational.  Two things that I learnt was that codes are sometimes hidden in pictures to open safes and they can also be in words, letters and symbols."  Thanks Oliver, a brick on the wall for you.

Here are some more facts for you!  Victory in World War Two relied heavily on the British breaking codes sent by the Germans via the Enigma machine.  The most important code-breakers were mathematicians.  Also, did you know that the biggest employer of mathematicians in the world is the US secret services?

:)

Mr C

Big Cat Diary

Higher Biology have been studying pack and territorial behaviour, competition, adaptations and "survival of the fittest" etc. On friday we used the clips from Big Cat to look at lots of examples. You can keep up with what's happening on http://www.bbc.co.uk/bigcat/ and watch the action from iplayer. This is a picture of a Cheetah from their website and they have been following her and her cubs over the past week (not for the soft hearted!)

Holiday reading

Hooray, hooray, it's a holiday!  Some of P7 were concerned that they would be bored over the holidays and are going to occupy themselves with some "Murderous Maths" books they've borrowed from the school.  These books have got many children into maths like never before.  When they've finished their books they'll be blogging or presenting to the class some new facts they've learned.  You can get the books here on Amazon.

Have a great holiday!

Mr C

Strawberry Fayre

Today we visited the Cardwell Centre for our growing plants topic. We looked at mother of thousands with their runners, other indoor plants and then chose this lovely strawberry plant to plant in our school garden - we are looking forward to having them with cream next year!

DNA Extraction

S2/3 Biology extracted DNA from a kiwi fruit today.

Pealed kiwi fruit, washing up liquid and salt were placed into a freezer bag.

Gabriella and Megan are making sure the kiwi fruit is well crushed.

The freezer bag and contents were then placed in a water bath for 5 minutes.



The contents of the freezer bag were then filtered, as demonstrated by Craig and Daniel.



Ethanol was very carefully added to the filtrate.


Deborah, Robyn and Rebecca with their test tube of filtrate.

The DNA is suspended in the top layer, you can see this if you look very closely!

Prime Time?

The other story currently on the 'Numbers in the News' board is the discovery of the world's largest prime number which has over 13 million digits! (BBC story here).  A prime number can only be divided by itself and 1.  What possible use is that information I hear you cry?  Well, if it wasn't for prime numbers we wouldn't have internet security.  When you make a purchase online your details are kept secure by a process called encryption and it all relies on very large prime numbers.  S3/4 have been looking at encryption in Computing.

Many year ago an Egyptian dude called Eratosthenes found a good way of finding primes - get rid of the ones that aren't!  S1 followed in his footsteps.  In the grid above all the multiples of 2, 3, 5 and 7 are coloured red.  The numbers in white are all prime numbers.  Voila!

Mr C