Happy New Year! Kefir drink

We were making Kefir in class today, a fermented alcoholic milk drink. We made jelly beads from sodium alginate trapping yeast and an enzyme in the gel bead. We dripped the sodium alginate into calcium chloride, strained the beads and then added them to milk to start the fermentation process. They make this drink in hot countries where it is hard to keep milk fresh.

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.