Class 6: September 2012

Glogs and Vokis

Do you know what a glog is? Have you heard a Voki? Let us show you!

Model undersea ROVs

Inspired by William's dad's visit, we have invented our own model ROVs for undersea work. Not only did we build them but have made detailed annotated drawings to show how they work.

Tag Rugby Festival

Good weather for the most part, ending in a downpour.

Well done Class 5 for working in mixed teams - a great way to meet people from other schools too!

How do you build an offshore wind farm?

William's dad came in to tell us all about his job today.

We saw a video of the huge cables being chopped up aboard the ship.

He lays the under-water cables that take the power ashore from off-shore turbines.

He uses ROVs (remote operated vehicles) to survey the area and then lay the cable under the sea bed.

This one is ready to be lowered on to the sea bed.

This one would fill our classroom!

He operates the ROVs from the control room on the deck of the ship.

The control area.

The cameras on the ROVs show what is happening underwater.

They engineers work 24 hours a day, in 12 hour shifts, in most weathers.

3D Shape Building

Last week we were revising the features of 3D shapes

we already knew and learning about some new ones.

Today we worked in groups to build shapes out of straws and

blutac to help us remember about their edges and vertices.

Ask us about how we contributed to

the activity as part of a group.

Some groups worked really well together.

Some people stuck well to the task and tried to

work out the best way of going about it.

Some people were good at taking a lead and organising the jobs.

Some people showed they could listen well to others and take advice.

Today we tried out the model wind turbine and the anemometer. It was hard to get them to work correctly but eventually we got some results. The anemometer showed that it was between F4 and F6 on the Beaufort scale. Perhaps the wires are damaged but the turbine didn't make the buzzer buzz or the light turn on. We'll try again when we've investigated further.

Visiting the wind turbine at Hatston

We walked to Hatston to visit the wind turbine there and have a look inside. Everyone can see the turbine from all around Kirkwall. The tower is 40 metres high and the diameter of the blades is 44 metres. From the ground to the tip of the blade pointing straight up it is 67 metres. Some of us had noticed a red light at the top of the tower at night. This is to tell aircraft where it is.

Click on the picture to get a larger version.

Inside we saw the ladder that goes up to the top. The engineers use a harness that attches to the ladder so that they cannot fall. They told us that when the wind blows its like being in a ship at sea!