Marbles passing from tower to tower

This session introduced the notion of harmonics, frequency, oscillation, triangulation and, of course, solving problems. We talked about the Tacoma Narrows bridge failure , particular thanks to Mr. Hamshaw and we looked at a glass being broken with sound.
Homework - go home and try singing to a wine glass ... loudly and highly pitched... or simply run your finger lightly around a slightly dampened rim of a wine glass.. you s
hould hear the harmonic evidence of ocillating frequency. See video here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECNDpCYvaOc

Next meeting not until 5th May - happy Easter form Mr. Geekie and the team.

see video here
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/demoweb/demomanual/acoustics/effects_of_sound/breaking_glass_with_sound.html

Structures - continuing scientifically to explore shapes

We built and destroyed paper structures to see which were the strongest.

More pictures from first structures session

Structures, hexagons, compasses, honeycombes, tessellations and.... dandelions

What an interesting session this evening.

We are starting a new topic which involves exploring structures. We talked about why a dandelion remained standing upright even when high winds had blown down fences, more about this next week.
We explored how to create a hexagon using a compass, and we built a large honeycomb which we then tested by standing on it. A really good introduction.
Tension and compression in a column was examined and our homework was to look up the word CONTRAFLEXURE and think why this could be relevant to a column under stress / loading.

Next Meeting March 11th ( a Wednesday )

Look forward to seeing you all - anyone allergic to club biscuits? I am planning to bring some clubs for our club (:o)

Fibonacci gauge and Mac v windows

Well was'nt it busy again? Well done everyone with the Fibonacci gauge and calculating the Fibonacci sequence to 20 places. This gave an accurate golden mean / golden ration / golden proportion figure of 1:1.618. It was good to see so many students complete their gauges.
Well done to the movie maker boys working in our staffroom. I think the macintosh will beat the windows machine even when the windows OS is reloaded.

Next meeting is some time off due to examination pressures.It will be on Tuesday 10th March when we will examine structures.

HAVE A GREAT HALF TERM - TRY SOME EXPERIMENTS, MAKE A HOT AIR BALLOON, BUILD SOMETHING, MAKE SOMETHING, ORGANISE SEEDS FOR A HABGING BASKET.

MR GEEKIE

Weather concerns for tomorrow Monday 2nd Feb 09

I am minded to say that I think we will have to consider postponing tomorrow's STEM session. The weather forecast is for severe weather, cold and with snow probable.
I will be at school to supervise students who could not make arrangements as usual.

If any concerns call me on 01482 870744 (home ) this evening.

Thankyou

Mr. Geekie