Finishing my Fellowship

I have now completed my 6 month Primary Science Teacher Fellowship and will return to teach my wonderful new entrant class in Room 1.
I have had many amazing science experiences and will share these with the students.
We have formed a Lower North Island science teacher cluster group so you may see some of the teachers in this photo visiting Muritai School at some stage!
I would like to thank the Royal Society of New Zealand and our principal Andrew Bird for making my fellowship possible.

Te Waewae Bay

This Bay is at the very southern end of New Zealand and faces Stewart Island. Fossil bearing rocks are washed up onto the beach by the wild sea. My samples are clam shells about 4-5 million years old, embedded in sandstone.

Curio Bay, Catlin's Coast, Southland

Fancy a trip to Jurassic Park?
I have recently returned from Curio Bay, where, at low tide, you can walk on the fossilised remains of a Jurassic forest floor that had been buried for 170 million years beneath river flood deposits. The tree trunks have silicified, meaning the wood has been replaced with the mineral silica, making them as hard as rock.You have to visit at low tide,as the forest floor is normally under water.

Get Ready Week

Peter Walker of the Hutt Emergency Management Centre is helping me work on our get ready plan for Muritai School. Get Ready week is in term 4 and Peter will come to watch us practise our tsunami drill.

Judging a Science Fair

Seatoun school asked me to be a judge for their Science Fair. The quality of the investigations was great and it was hard to choose the winner! I am really looking forward to the Muritai School Science Fair this week and know it will be just as fantastic!

GeoNet in action at GNS Science

The GeoNet programme improves the detection and understanding of geological hazards such as volcanos, earthquakes and landslides with live information collected by hazard monitoring equipment around the country. Information in various forms is freely available to everyone through its interactive website. For example, you can have emails sent to you each time there is an earthquake in NZ and you can email back a reply if you felt it. Scientists Kevin Fenaughty and Sara Page showed me around.

Cool Student resources from GNS Science Lower Hutt

Julian Thomson, a teacher and researcher at GNS Science, showed me amazing resources he creates as part of his Educational Outreach programme. He has a passion for glaciers and an interest in earthquakes, fossils and rocks among other things!
Check out the GNS website for Julians's blog.

Visiting Earthquake Scientists at GNS Science

Scientist Rob Langridge showed me an exciting research project he is working on!
Aerial photographs show scientists lots of information about fault lines but in New Zealand large areas of forest cover mean the contours of the land cannot be seen in many places.
He is using a laser scanner operated from a small plane to collect images that travel down to the land and bounce back up to the plane without showing the trees!

Visiting scientists at GNS Science Lower Hutt

At Harcourt Park in Upper Hutt we could see the fault line as a clear line running vertically down the river bank. Look on the left side of the photo where the gravels change colour and texture in a straight line from just under the big beech tree to the water.



Earthquake scientist Frank Van Dissen took me to see evidence of the Wellington fault line along the banks of the Hutt River. Here you can see the fault exposed on the north west bank.
Crushed rock from the fault is washed into the river.

GNS Science in Lower Hutt

This trench is across the earthquake faultline at Ohariu Valley near Johnsonville.
Photos courtesy of GNS Science

This week I have been talking to earthquake scientists at GNS Science.
Nicola Litchfield is an earthquake geologist who investigates large prehistoric earthquakes in the Wellington region. She is part of a team who have dug deep trenches across earthquake faults around Wellington. Through analysis of the exposed layers and carbon dating them the dates of previous quakes can be estimated.

More Fossils!

We discovered our shells are from the pleistocene period, which covers the last million years. In fossil years they are quite young, even though we estimate them to be 60,000 to 100,000 years old!




This week I've been spending time preparing fossilised shells for identification and classification in the Sedimentology Lab. These chunks of siltstone, mixed with the shells came from a beach at Castlecliff near Whanganui. First we wash the chunks in a small round metal sieve. Then we identify them by comparing them with samples kept in the University collection, using reference books or using an online catalogue.

Wellington science teacher fellows visit Victoria University.

In the Earth Science lab we looked at grains of pollen taken from core samples of sediment/soils drilled from within the earth under microscopes. We learned how scientists can tell by identifying the types of pollen which plants were growing on the Earth millions of years ago. This helps them understand the impact that climate change has had on planet earth.

We made some flubber, which is a mixture of PVA glue and borax(a chemical from the chemist). The PVA is a long chain polymer,which means its molecules can slide over each other and are 'runny'. When you add the borax it stops the molecules sliding and they stick together, making a kind of silly putty, called 'flubber'! It is great to play with and will even bounce!

Last Friday some primary science teachers visited us so we organised time in the chemistry and earth science labs.
In the chemistry lab we experimented with magnets, balance and optical illusions.

Wairarapa Field Trip

Next stop was to the marine terraces high above Whangamoana Beach, near Lake Ferry. We had to walk very carefully along the edge of the cliff face as it was a long way down and we didn't want to slip! The tops of these terraces formed the sea floor millions of years ago and were down at sea level.



My most recent field trip was with GNS Science to the South Wairarapa. I tagged along with seismologists visiting from California. We walked up the riverbed of the Wharekauhau Stream to see the "Wharekauhau thrust",huge cliffs composed of thick layers of bedrock,silt containing ancient tree trunks and roots and marine gravels. You can see the layers quite clearly in the photos.

P waves and S waves

Scientists and researchers can spend lots of time analysing data and I am helping with earthquake data at present. Information collected by seismometers measuring earthquake activity is accessed by computer and checked for accuracy in picking out two kinds of seismic waves - S and P waves.
During an earthquake the 2 sides of a faultline jerk past each other,releasing stored energy as seismic waves that travel out through the surrounding rock.
Seismic waves travel at different speeds - P waves are fast and reach the surface first,S waves are slower and cause the ground to shudder backwards and forwards.
It is important to record each of these separatetly - a slow job as there are thousands and thousands for each series of earthquakes!

Teaching Black Robins!

Before we left I had the opportunity to hold a giant weta! It was very heavy, very cold and very tickly!

North Island Black Robins are clever birds. Their Maori name is Toutouwai.
A close up of their food stick.
The robins now always go straight to the hole with 2 worms in it. Michelle says they have learned to count to 2 as the holes are covered up and they can't see in! They move the cover with their beaks.
The robins watch while she puts 2 mealworms on a hole at one end of the branch and only 1 in the hole at the other end. She puts covers over the holes.
Michelle has taught the robins to come when they hear her call. She bangs 2 sticks together and they appear from the trees.

First Brian, our guide, showed us the predator proof fence that stops animals getting in or out.
Last Friday, Michelle, a RSNZ Primary Teacher Fellow hosted by Zealandia in Karori, invited the Wellington cluster group to visit and see her research project with North Island Black Robins.