Optical Illusions

Ms Travi found a great site yesterday with lots of optical illusions to view on screen - you can get there by clicking on the pic. Optical illusions are interesting because they fool the brain into seeing or imagining things that aren't really there. After looking at an illusion, read about it below and try to find out how it works.

Be careful not to look at them for too long - some are a bit nauseating - and if you start to feel sick then (obviously) it'd be best to stop straight away rather than make a mess over the keyboard!

And, whilst we're on the subject of illusions, you might like to have a look at some of MC Escher's work. He was a Dutch artist born in 1898 and he's most famous for his tessellations and 'impossible' drawings. Take a look at this online gallery - I bet you recognise some of his work!

Zoetropes

One of our Victorian Day activities tomorrow will be making a zoetrope. This is an optical toy that appears to make images move - a bit like a flickbook - and was invented in the 1830s. You can read more about them here.

There are lots of different instructions on the web explaining how to make your own zoetrope. These are the ones we'll be using in school - look towards the bottom of the page for printable templates. There are also instructions on the BBC site and even some from the US that were made in 1906! Click the picture below to download this as a pdf that you can print out.

This site also has lots of info about other similar toys, many of which were invented during the Victorian era.

Homework Project: Make a Musical Instrument

Our main homework this (very short) half term is to make a musical instrument. It must be a pitched instrument - in other words, you can make higher or lower notes on it in some way.

Your instrument could be a:

• guitar
• banjo
• harp
  
• other stringed instrument
• pan pipes
• flute
• other wind instrument
• drum (that can change pitch)
• xylophone
• completely new instrument you create!

Below are some websites with ideas and designs. You might also find books in the library that would give you ideas, and looking at a range of musical instruments will help you with the project. It's fine for parents/brothers/sisters/grandparents/cousins etc to help (but not do it all for you)! Make sure you are safe and any cutting, sawing, hammering etc is supervised by an adult.

When you've made the instrument, there will be a project sheet to fill in explaining your design. This will be available during week 3 (the week we're back from Subic).

The project needs to be complete and in school by Wednesday March 12th ready for a demonstration (or even performance!) on the last Thursday and Friday of term.

Useful websites:

How to make a bleach-bottle banjo
Wannalearn Musical Instruments
http://www.mudcat.org/kids

If you find a good website, share it with everyone by adding a comment :-)

Changing Sounds - our next science topic

After the half term break, our new science topic is 'Changing Sounds'. We'll be exploring how sounds are made, how they can be changed and how we hear them. Lots of the topic will be hands-on with musical instruments, and in DT we're going to build our own!

Below are some good websites you might want to have a look at over the holiday, if you're able to. Also, you can start to think about what kind of instrument you might like to design and build - and how!

Virtual Orchestra - Hear all orchestral instruments

BBC Science Clips	Get Physical Ch 4 Science Essentials	Activity and Resources Foss Web

Teacher Resources Engineering Interact	Sound Properties Engineering Interact	All about Ears Kids Health

Interactive sound ruler nidcd.nih.gov	Pitch science.education.nih.gov	Vibrations enter ear science.education.nih.gov

Identify the sounds game scholastic.com	Sound animations ltscotland.org.uk	Sounds Amazing acoustics.salford.ac.uk

from Kent's NGFL site

Year Five Earth and Space Mission

Your weight on other planets

We made some cool spreadsheets in maths today - here's a couple of examples:

Christian's spreadsheet
Nina's spreadsheet

Can you work out how they made them?

Here's the data you'll need for my group's maths lesson today, where we're making a spreadsheet to calculate your weight on other planets:

Celestial Body	Gravitation Factor Relative to Earth
Sun	27.9
Mercury	0.38
Venus	0.91
Earth	1
Moon	0.17
Mars	0.38
Jupiter	2.54
Saturn	1.08
Uranus	0.91
Neptune	1.19
Pluto	0.06

Our size in space

Here's the video we watched in science today - this will make you feel very small indeed!

Earth & Space Quiz

Here's a quiz about space from a school in the US (don't worry about the pass mark - there's lots of things we haven't learnt here yet and it's just for fun!) See how many questions you can get right! If it's popular we can create our own quizzes like this and put them on the site.

Powered By ProProfs - Create A Quiz or Flash cards

Earth Sun & Moon game

This site is fantastic!

It's a game that takes you on an adventure to find out more about the Earth, Sun and Moon. There's loads of facts to learn in the game - in fact lots of what we'll be learning about in the next 3 weeks is here - and some great animations too. First you need to navigate through the asteroid belt, then visit each of the 3 'heavenly bodies'. There's another asteroid shoot-out on the way back, then a quiz at the end. You can even print out a certificate at the end! Enjoy :-]

Comparing the Earth and the Moon

This week we're learning about the sizes of the Earth, Sun and Moon, and also about how close they are to each other.



The picture above (click for a bigger version) shows 2 things:

1. How big the Earth and Moon are compared to each other. Which is bigger? How much bigger, do you think?

2. How far the Earth and Moon are apart. I bet you thought they were closer than that! Do you know how far it is to the Moon? Did you know, If you could fly to the Moon at a constant speed of 1000 kilometers per hour, which is the speed of a fast passenger jet, it would take sixteen days to get there. Apollo astronauts reached there in about 4 days - that's a fast rocket!

How big would the Sun be on this picture? How far away do you think it would be...? Could it fit on your computer screen? Would it even be in the same room?!

Earth, Sun & Moon interactive!

You can find out what we'll be learning about the Earth, Sun and Moon at this site, and try a quiz by clicking here!

Learn your Earth and space vocab

We used a couple of dictionary websites (Wordsmith and Merriam-Webster) to find out the meaning of our spelling words - and found some pictures to go with them too. Click on the pic above to see a bigger version of Eirine's, which she finished earlier today.

Here's a few more words and phrases that you might need to know:

- Celestial = (adjective) to describe something in space (i.e. planets, moons, stars, galaxies, comets, etc). The word tends to be used quite often in religious writing.
- Heavenly body = (noun) any large object in space. The Earth and the sun are both 'heavenly bodies'.
- Axis = (noun) the imaginary line that runs through the Earth from the north to south pole. The Earth rotates (spins) around this axis.
- Gravitational = (adjective) to do with gravity. The gravitational pull of Jupiter is much greater than Earth's, because it is much larger.

The site we searched on, 'Kid's Search Tools', is at http://www.rcls.org/ksearch.htm

Earth & Space websites

Check out this list of websites to help you learn more about our current science topic. More will be added as we go on!

Woodlands Junior School - this is an excellent page of links to check out!
BBC Space - masses of info, interactive thingies and games - designed for adults but you're clever - go for it!
Space.com - a great site with loads of info from astronauts, data about planets and facts from NASA - recommended by Sam
Random Space Fact Generator - on GridClub - you need to log in (luzon/taguig)
Solar System Explorer - on GridClub - you need to log in
Nine Planets - recommended by Martine
Nine Planets Kids - also recommended by Martine
Astronomy.com Planets - recommended by Christian
Kidsastronomy.com - Bethany says: "It includes facts that are easy to understand, pictures, songs, videos and games" - sounds great!

Space Diaries

Space Diaries is another new site where our intrepid Year 5 space travellers will be logging some of the weird and wonderful things they’ve encountered on their adventures around the galaxy….and beyond!

Different adventurers will write up their diary entries - explaining where they’ve been, what it was like, and what they’ve found out. Voyages will start from and end up back at our space station orbiting Earth, where the picture above was taken from.

Other people can write up replies to the diary entries, asking questions or making general comments about their voyage into space.

So - start thinking about your adventure - where would you like to go? A planet or moon in our Solar System? An asteroid belt? Another ‘close’ star, like Alpha Centauri? Search for alien life on a new planet? Somewhere else in our galaxy, the Milky Way? Another galaxy? A black hole?

Check out the site at http://spacediaries.wordpress.com... if there's nothing there yet - maybe you could be first to blast off into space! See Mr Millington for details.