The BBQ and day 3 at Nethy

Wednesday night ended with a barbecue and some songs round the campfire with all the schools together as the sun set and the moon rose in a clear sky.

 Day 3 started with  the silver maze and problem solving in the forest. Team work and cooperation helped. Some of the problems required perseverance and quite a few attempts.

In the afternoon we went canoeing and did archery. The canoeing at the pond was great fun as we competed at picking up the balls to win points and had the obligatory jump in to freezing water at the end of the session.

It looked inviting in the hot weather, but it was a little more refreshing than expected!

The winers of the art competition with their work and their prize.

Tonight a DVD and a good sleep, then a Forest Adventure tomorrow morning before we leave.

The S Team : Research and Development

Back in class the S Team continued their work by sorting and cleaning smaller items to be used in art work.

We identified some of the livings things that make up the ecosystems at Scapa and started compiling our 'biodiversity' list - a list of all the living things we find on our visits.

Some of the larget items have to be hosed outside.

Next we designed and made models of bins which we thought could be used at Scapa to solve the problem of where to put marine litter. If visitors to Scapa used the bins that are there at the moment for marine litter they would fill up very quickly and that would create another problem. Some of the items are quite large and don't fit in a regular bin.

'The Rubbish Digester'

'The S bin'.

The Scaspa Box

Scapa Litter and Information Station

The Green Giant

The Wheely Bin 7000

Evaluating our designs meant we had to think critically about the problems of collecting and removing litter as well as how to encourage visitors to Scapa to help.

How to make a model igloo

Last week there was not enough snow to build an igloo outside so we used John Rae's notes and drawings, and a Ray Mears video, to make a model igloo.

Arctic adaptations

We are continuing to find out about the Arctic and how animals have adapted to deal with the freezing temperatures. This week we investigated how effective blubber is at insulating animals from the cold.

Here we are spreading the lard evenly around the hand of the volunteer inside a plastic bag.

We took the temperature of the hand inside the blubber mitten before it went into the ice water.

The volunteer put their hand inside the mitten into the ice water (1degree C) for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes the temperature of the hand in the glove had gone up!

Then the volunteers did the same with their other hand without a mitten made of blubber. They lasted for 1.5 minutes and the temperature of their hand dropped from 30 degrees C to 8 degrees C!

Finally everyone wanted to find out what it felt like to put their hand in the ice - water... they lasted for 45 seconds and there was a lot of shrieking!!!!!!!!!

We concluded that 4 inches of blubber would easily keep a polar bear warm in sub zero temperatures.

Why not have a look at some of our Prezi presentations about Arctic food chains on our new wiki project pages!
Here is an example - this is Leah's Prezi:

Making model open boats

We designed and created model open boats using some of the methods we know are used to make traditional birch bark canoes. We only had glue and string to make the joins. We used PVA as a waterproofing for the skin if we thought it need it. It didn't work quite as well as resin and bear fat to close any leaks. Everyone made gunwhales as part of their framework but there was a mix of hull designs. Some had a distinctive V shape along the keel while others were the traditional open canoe flat bottomed hull. Most people modified their designs to some extent as they made the models, and everyone learned a lot.