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.

Applied Geophysics Field Trip to Tongariro National Park

Reading a gravity meter.

For any geophysical survey it is important to know exactly where you are on the surface of the earth. We use gravity surveying for this.
The hole!
This was a really big bang!
We pushed the explosives down the holes we had bored.
Firing was by remote control,linked to a laptop.
The explosives looked like a roll of salami and were powerful enough to blow up a car! We had to have an explosives expert with us and wear safety vests!
We drilled holes for the explosives!
These are geophones that "read" the waves from the impact of the hammer or an explosion as if there was an earthquake.
The seismic survey was very exciting!
We used a line of geophones as sensors and used explosives and a sledge hammer hitting a metal plate as a seismic source
The students on the field trip.
Mount Ruapehu has a number of earthquake faultlines close by.
During the school holidays I joined 16 students and 4 staff on a field trip to learn how to design and conduct geophysical surveys in order to find out more about 3 earthquake fault lines in the area around the southern side of Mt Ruapehu. As well as this I was "Camp Mother"- responsible for keeping everybody well fed and happy - a big job in itself as the nearest shop was a 20 km trip away and field work makes everyone very hungry! The goal was to "do" scientific research by collecting some simple data sets on faults and compare the following methods-resistivity,seismic,magnetic and gravity.

Field Work

The round ball like object at the top of the solar panel is the GPS unit.
Keeping equipment dry is very important! We use lots of plastic boxes and bags!
Downloading data on a laptop. It looks like lots of numbers.
A reftek seismic recorder - these are put in heavy duty plastic bags or plastic boxes to keep them dry.
A palm pilot records the data about the position of each seismic station
I have spent time over the past few weeks checking and collecting data from seismometer stations around the Wellington area. Some are permanent and record data long term, while others are left in place for a particular length of time for a monitoring project and then shifted to other sites. Site information is read from a palm pilot linked to GPS and recorded so we know which site is which later. Seismic data is stored on cards like the sd card in a digital camera. Data is downloaded onto a laptop and new cards put in to collect new information. Most have a solar panel for power and back up batteries as well.

More Fossils!

While on my fellowship I have become fascinated by fossils. On a recent field trip to the beach at Paekakariki we found evidence of an early cooking pit sandwiched between layers of sand in the eroded sand hills behind the beach. It is called a shell midden and contains discarded fossilised clam shells and carbonised wood (charcoal) from the cooking fires.
It is hundreds of years old and gives us information about what early inhabitants of this area ate and how they cooked their food.

A visit to NIWA: "Where water meets the sky"

The paua try to cling onto your hand! They are this lovely blue colour because they have grown up in a tank and have not been out in sunlight. If you look carefully you will see little yellow tags to identify its genetic stock. Other paua had red, green, yellow or blue tags.(The tags don't hurt the paua)
At NIWA they are running a paua breeding programme to produce a strain of fast growing and healthy paua.
Ms Harrison with a king crab. Ms Harrison invited us to NIWA as she is working there as a science fellow. She used to teach at Muritai School and says "hello" to anyone who remembers her!

A giant sea spider!

This is an isopod - a bit like a giant underwater slater! It crawls along the sea floor in parts of the Atlantic Ocean.

Each month the Wellington Primary Science Teacher Fellows visit one of the science organisations where one of us is hosted. Last week we visited NIWA. NIWA's focus is the atmosphere and water(marine and freshwater)and the life within.

Fossils, fossils fossils!

Marianna has just co-written and published 'The Kiwi Fossil Hunter's Handbook' which shows you how and where to find fossils around New Zealand. I will buy a copy for the Muritai School library.
Part of a New Zealand dinosaur! This one is a moasaur.
Here is a fossil of a prehistoric fish!

On a visit to GNS Science with my Wellington cluster group I was able to learn more about New Zealand fossils from John Simes, the collections manager and Marianna Terezow, a computer technician with a passion for paleontology. Paleontology is the study of fossils, which are usually the hard or bony parts of animals or plants that have been preserved in sand and mud (sediment) that has been turned into sedimentary rock over huge amounts of time (millions of years).

Learning about Rocks

Some of the samples were fossilised. Can you tell what these ones are?

Last week I learned about rock types by comparing similarities and differences of lots of samples.

Maui fishes up New Zealand.

Follow this legend to see what New Zealand might look like in 4 million years time!
I saw this storyboard while I was investigating the Wellington earthquake faultline.

Information via text message!

The generator is enormous and takes up a small room!

Last week I visited the Hutt Valley Emergency Management office in Lower Hutt. They are responsible for co-ordinating responses to emergencies such as tsunami,earthquake, flood and fire hazards. Muritai and all other schools are linked to their ReadyNet emergency preparedness network. If there is an emergency such as a tsunami alert they send the school a text message! They have their own generator to provide power if it has been cut off.

Mrs Ryan as a Scientist

Follow my activities while I am on my Primary Science Teacher Fellowship.

Kupe's Sail

Maori legend says that the great navigator Kupe won an argument with his rival Ngake about who could make a sail in the fastest time. Kupe won and the triangular shaped rock tilted at 45degrees represents the sail. The rock is about 15 million years old and was originally the flat bed of the ocean floor before massive earth movement tilted it upwards!

These fossil shells look very much like present day but are 6 million years old!