Miss Ellen McCrimmon
During our topic, P5B have been looking at sound and how it travels. We discussed how sound travels during thunder and lightning, earthquakes and in general day-to-day living. We learned about how sound travels through different mediums – solids, liquids and gasses. We tested this using a cup and string experiment. We tested whispering to each other across the classroom and judging how well we could hear each other. We then used two cups and a long piece of sting pulled tightly and loose. We did the same with a short piece of string. We ranked the 5 different variables in order of easiest and hardest to hear our partners. We found that the shorter piece of string worked best when pulled tight as the particles in a solid are tightly packed together and can vibrate easily. We also deduced that the shortest piece of string worked slightly better than the long piece of string as the sound didn’t have as far to travel. It was definitely a very fun afternoon with lots of discussion!
In P5B, we have been very lucky to have some music students from the University of Edinburgh come in and improve our musical skills and talents. We have been able to trial different instruments and how they can be used to simulate different sounds, such as thunder, lightning, an earthquake, etc. As well as that we worked on our ‘We Are Scientists’ song, building on it week by week as we learn more about natural disasters.
P5B have been extremely lucky to have Grace’s mum, Steph, come in and show us how to make some decorations using salt dough. Some chose to make Christmas decorations, while others chose to mould their initials, food, animals – we had all sorts really. We had a wonderful morning designing and modelling the dough. Next week we will be completing them with some glitter and paint! They will make a wonderful accessory to any home décor!
Within our Natural Disasters topic, we have been looking at how light is used during any rescue efforts. Firstly we had to learn about some of the properties of light and how this connects to sound. We identified that sound travels slower than light, light always travels in a straight line and looked at how different materials either reflect or absorb light. We then went on to classify certain classroom objects as being; opaque, translucent or transparent.
During our P5 topic of Earthquakes and Natural disasters, P5B have been looking at building structures to withstand an earthquake. There was a lot of ingenuity in our designs. We thought about height, width and the use of cross bracing for this challenge. Once we built our structures, we had to see how they would hold up in an earthquake. We shook a jelly base to simulate the this. We started with smaller shakes or nudges for earthquakes lower on the Richter scale and we definitely did some much more vigorous shaking to reach 10 on the Richter scale. It is safe to say some structures were architecturally beautiful, but were not made for earthquake safety, however, we definitely have a few future engineers and architects in P5B who should be designing buildings all around fault lines as they were indestructible!! A great effort from everyone and some wonderful team work! Well done!
