Bird Safari

28/7/15

My grandparents' friends took us to go on bird safari. They took us to a rice field that used to belong to my grandparents. We sat in the back of a pickup and had our cameras at the ready.

We saw many species, I spotted a beautiful brown and blue kingfisher but wasn't quick enough to photograph it. We saw many cranes eating aquatic snails in the paddy fields, there were loads! We even saw weaver bird nests!

My First Time Solo Canoeing

27/7/15

We're currently on holiday in Thailand (my home country) for the summer. Yesterday, my dad took the whole family out canoeing on the River Kwai after finding his old canoe in my grandparents' house.

First, I went with my dad just around the river. He taught me how to do a J-stroke. This helps to keep the boat on course, because when paddling on just one side, the boat moves to the opposite side that you're paddling on, a J-stroke corrects this. I had already learned Indian stroke before and carried on doing this for a while.

My dad left the canoe and let me and my mum go alone. I sat in the front and steered whilst my mum paddled to help the boat gain some momentum. It was fun paddling with my mum! Next my dad told me to go solo. I was quite frightened as I had never been in a canoe alone before. However, after a while, I got used to it and actually did quite well.

The Day I met Professor Brian Cox!!

25/6/15

Today, I met Professor Brian Cox. My head of year leader told me that he was coming to congratulate a group of students at my school for completing a course and decided to let me see him as well as she knew how much I loved physics.

I left my ICT class early to see Brian and on the way knocked on my maths teacher's door, she came with me too as she also likes physics. We made our way into the hall and saw him stood not too far away. One of the teachers who helped to organise the event took me up to the professor and introduced me to him. I was extremely nervous talking to him as he is someone I look up to and we talked about how much I like physics and whether it is something I would consider as a university course option (which I definitely am!) and I got him to sign my book (Why does E=mc²) which was also signed by the other author, Professor Forshaw.

After meeting him, he went away to see the other people. My maths teacher was also dying to see him so another teacher brought him over to where we were standing and he talked to her. I grabbed this opportunity to ask him about nuclear fusion. My question was about tokamaks and how they work. He said that for nuclear fusion to happen, the atoms have to be ionised (stripped of electrons) this means that the net charge of the nuclei is positive (as there will only be protons (positive) and neutrons (neutral) left). The method used with tokamaks is magnetic confinement, this means that they use magnetic fields to contain the positive nuclei whilst they 'whizz' around within, occasionally bumping into other nuclei and starting a nuclear reaction.

It was a pleasure meeting Professor Cox and I hope to see him sometime in the future.

St Peter's School: Physics Olympics

17/6/15

Today, I went to St Peter's School to take part in a physics competition! Our team comprised of two girls and two boys, all of us are physics geeks. We had a great time meeting like-minded people and having a go at the challenges during the day.

The first challenge we took part in was called 'Payload'. Teams had to design a boat with basic materials like card, a sheet of acetate, plastic bottles etc. and then we had to see how many marbles they would hold. Our boat managed to hold 69 marbles before it sank.

The next challenge was called 'Good Vibrations', in this one, we had to determine the weight of a toy duck using an oscillating ruler and some weights. First we timed how long it took a 50g weight to oscillate 20 times, next we timed a 100g weight and then 150g. We plotted our results on a graph. We then measured how long it took the duck to oscillate 20 times and, using the line of best fit, we found out its weight.

Next, we had to create an electromagnet and see how many paperclips we could pick up. We had a choice of whether to use a core of aluminium, steel, or iron. We were also able to choose how we connected our circuit. The best way to pick up the most paperclips was using a core of either steel or iron and connecting two cells in parallel to the coiled wire around the metal.

Our next challenge was to build a lighthouse using a magazine, wire and a bulb. The aim was to hold a creme egg as far off the ground as possible and connecting the bulb to the top, extra oints were awarded if we were able to get our bulb to flash three times. The strongest and sturdiest lighthouses were made of three rolled up pieces of paper joining in the middle (like a tripod) and another rolled up piece of paper on top of the joint holding the egg. The way to get the bulb to flash was to connect it up but with one side of the wire quite loose and tapping the loose end.

Our final challenge was to create a solar powered boat. We designed the boat and chose the best propeller then charged up our capacitor and let timed the boat.

Throughout the day, all members of the team took part in a Fermi quiz where we had to estimate values to the nearest power of 10. These included the volume of air above the county of Yorkshire, the amount of handcuffs needed to travel the distance of the moon's orbit around earth twice and how many Smarties weighed the same as a hippo. The bonus question was to estimate the amount of Smarties in a container. We were one of five teams to get closest to the answer to the bonus question which was 433 and we one 433 Smarties to share between us.

We didn't win but we definitely had a great time! Thank you to St Peter's for hosting the event and all of the sponsors.