Our Rocket Challenge still has time to go but Wednesday the 26th is the day we achieved one of our Goals.  We Blasted a rocket across the school grounds and out of the School Property.  Belinda was the successful engineer who achieved our biggest goal yet.  We had managed to cross the netball court,   cross our classroom,  cross the school field and finally cross into a neighbouring property.  Check out our video.

Because we still have time to go, we will get a group of our best engineers together to spend a bit of time looking at our designs and talking with some experts. We know that we had to add weight to our rockets nose and that we have to consider how much water to add. Our water to weight ratio seems to have an affect on how far our rockets travel. The more water we add the heavier our rockets are. We are also considering takeoff angle and pressure as well. It seems our Laucher has a pressure release valve on it that lets pressure out at 120psi. 

  Next Steps. 

Safety - Have our safety officer make sure that our area is safe and that all observers are back at a safe distance. 

Launch Control - We want to make maximum use of the pressure we have. We want to launch just before reaching 120psi. 

 Payload Specialist - We want to do further testing on how much water is the perfect amount.

 Communications Specialist - We have located a very very small camera that we will fit to our rocket to video it's path. Fitting this so it safely makes the complete flight without being damaged will be important.

Learn, Create Share, Share more.

It is clearly evident that in my first year at Kaniere School I am loving the Learn, Create and Share philosophy. It is also clear that I haven't quite got the "Share" part right yet. I need to do this more. So here goes. 

 Our Egg Challenge last week got us thinking that we need to go above and beyond all the other classes. Kererū is no ordinary class, we are the best and we need to think like that. The challenge was to see how high you could bounce an egg. We did the research and put our egg in the bath of vinegar for a week and did what everyone else was doing. Then some bright spark said, "what is a real egg?" I could see how our focus on Critical Thinking was turning us into creative thinkers. The idea being that was a 'Rubber Egg' a real egg? Was an easter egg a real egg? We decided that a rubber egg was a real egg as it was real, it was just rubber egg real.

What we do in a normal week in Kererū.

It was timely to stop at week 3 and look at all we do in a week in our class.  

Our West-A-Math team have been working hard to improve for Wednesday's competition in Westport. 

We have been practicing hard for the Rip Rugby with Helen on a Tuesday, and our big topic focus for energy at the moment is our Rocket Challenge.

Schools all over NZ all take part in the 'Rocket challenge' that sees us trying to launch a rocket higher and further than anyone else using just water and pressure.   

 We got our engineering experts on the case and decided that we had some "pressure leaks"  in our launch machine, that had to be remedied before we went any further.  After that we were dying to try to launch even the simplest bottle.  This was fun but far from perfect as they spun out and went all over the place.  The focus then was on how to improve them.  Simple nose cones and fins had some success but then we had to consider weight and the amount of water in our rockets and what the effect was on how far they travel.  Our biggest taste of success was Tuesday when we concentrated on weight on the front of Liam Cuff's Rocket.  We launched it and it took off hitting and denting the door of the Bike shed.   (Well thats our story).  Stay turned for an update on our goal to win New Zealand's Rocket Challenge.