Ginger Gems - Home Economics

Yesterday in home ec we made ginger gems, this is a blogpost that will describe the process, the teamwork, the outcome, how my team/class worked, taste and texture and next steps.

We collected all of the ingredients and put them on the table with all the different bowls we needed. Not only my team but pretty much the whole class read recipe wrong. We needed to have all together 150g of butter but needed to split it into 100 and 50, 50 for the trays and 100 for the actual food. My teams teamwork was good we all had something to do during the lesson and no one was just standing there watching.

Taste: They tasted a little spicy but they tasted like regular cinnamon spice muffins, they were really good but sickening for me.
Texture: The texture on the outside was a little crunchy and on the inside it was soft and a perfect texture for me.
Colour: They looked how you would imagine ginger gems to look. Maybe a little crispier but overall they looked tasty and good.
Even sized: They were all the same size which I was happy about.

Heres a photo of the tin they used to be made in and an outcome photo of the gems.

Rats/Mice - Social Studies

Video 1

Where did this happen? 
- Australia.

How did this happen?
- They had months of rain which made all the crops grow so it was perfect condition for them.

How many offspring can 2 mice parents make? 
- They can have 2,000 a month and have a 100 million a year.

How much wheat did they eat? 
- 500,000 tones.

How did they kill them/how many dead? 
The farm owners used poison to kill all of them.

Video 2

Where is this happening?
- India

Why is this happening?
-  They believed the rats were there ancestors. They also believe their god wants the rats to protect them.

What special treatment do the rats get?
- The people warship them and treat them as there family, they eat first also treated like celebrities. They believe that once you die you will reincarnate as a rat. You can't kill the rats.

Tsunami - Graph

In social studies we researched the heights of different buildings and things compared to the Alaska Tsunami that happened in 1958 that was over 500m high which is extremely tall compared to a lot of the buildings that are included in the graph.

As you can see the tsunami was very very big. It was only 298m less than the Burj Khalifa (tallest building in the world)

Separating a mixture using evaporation. 

Aim: Looking at how evaporation works.
Hypothesis: I don't know or have any predictions for this experiment.

Equipment: Copper sulphate solution, 250mL beaker, heat proof mat, evaporating basin, element.
Method: 
1: Set up element
2: Add 100mL of hot water to the beaker and place on the element.
3: Add copper sulphate to the evaporating basin until it is quarter full.
4: Carefully place the evaporating basin on top of the beaker.
5: Turn the temperature to 8.
6: Heat the solution until most of the solvent has been evaporated and crystals of solute are forming.
7: Turn off the element, careful not to touch as it will be hot for a long time.

Observations: When I first looked at the process I realised the copper sulphate had shrunk and the water beneath was boiling. The side if the beaker had condensation.
Conclusion: I didn't have a hypothesis so there is no answer to this.
Discussion: The solvent (copper sulphate) starts to evaporate because of the heat caused by the boiling solute (water) that is on the element. This is happening because of the boiling water which creates condensation.
Conclusion: This experiment was really fun because I liked watching the process happen it was interesting.

Improving Products - Business Studies

As a group we came up with an idea of making sanitary pads and tampons free in all public bathrooms. It isn't an invention but it's improving something and helping out probably millions of girls in need.

An idea of how the sanitary products could be displayed is in a dispenser on the wall in bathrooms.
We could have a school mufti day to raise money for buying the products and supplies for the dispensers.

We want to do this because sometimes people don't have enough money to buy these very necessary products. It would be helping homeless people in need because every girl has their period and need these things.

This change would help women save a lot of money because these products can be expensive in some places.

Here is a photo of the product in store with a price and then a drawing of how our idea would be displayed in the bathroom.

Athletics Results

For the past couple of weeks in P.E we have been training for athletics and looking at our starting times and how far we can throw then we train and practise and then see how much we have improved. 

Here's my chart from before and after. 

As you can see I made a lot of process and have better results than I did at the start of P.E. My biggest improvement was shot put, I learnt better skills on how to throw it better and my footwork, I have also become very confident in shot put now. 

High Jump and Long Distance are not filled in because I haven't trained for them and don't know my before and after results. In High Jump I did learn how to fosbury flop which I am happy about. 

Here are some of my running times. 
100m - 17.78 
200m - 32.5 

Kiwi Ingenuity - Business Studies

The most beneficial invention in my opinion was definitely the waterfall slide. It sounds like a playful feature but its actually really helpful and stopping the water from interfering with the road. If the waterfall slide wasn't there people wouldn't be able to pass. This idea could be useful in a lot of different countries if it isn't already. 

  

The least beneficial was the spreadable butter machine. It's creative but I think its a waste of time, you can easily spread butter yourself. It would somehow attract peoples attention in other countries but when you think about it, it isn't that useful but would be good to have. 

 

For the examples of which inventions do you think could capture people from other countries eyes would be these two photos.

These photos look very interesting and eye grabbing. From first glance you could think what!! But they look very fun and interesting.