Building a Roller Coaster

The Melbourne Meteor

Hi it's P here.  Well, we just spent the first week of the holidays building a roller coaster!  OK, not quite full size and just out of paper, but a great family construction project none-the-less.  I found a great site called paperrollercoasters.com run by ex-teacher Andrew Gatt.  You can buy templates for $20 and print them onto card.  They come with a detailed instruction manual:

How to build paper roller coasters

We first cut out the designs and folded and taped them to make the parts - columns, beams, bracing, shelves, brackets, straight track, sharp turns, wide turns, loops, merges, switches and funnels!  The templates were very well designed and we appreciated the thought that had gone into them.

Construction of the framework then began, anchored to a cardboard base.

The Snork Maiden at work building a strong foundation

Moomintroll checking on proceedings

The finished frame and a bucket of track parts

We all had input into how the final roller coaster would look.  The Snork Maiden designed and assembled the fast track section.  Moomintroll created the slow track section.  Over a few days it all came together, and "The Melbourne Meteor" was born!

Marvin & The Melbourne Meteor in 3D

There were so many things to like about this project.  The girls got great experience thinking in 3 dimensions.  They interpreted plans, worked with nets and created parts.  They were also exposed to the engineering challenges of team work, project management, problem solving and innovation.

Loss

This year we have experienced much loss. The deaths of Laura and Mary were quickly followed by the sudden decline of our beautiful Harris and then the very unexpected death of lovely bunny Nutmeg a week later.  We now have just three pets remaining - Sniff, Hazel and Cuddlepie.  Although they all showed signs of distress and loneliness at first they are now all quite content with being the only one of their kind. Sniff in particular is like a different dog; she is quiet, calm and more affectionate now that she's the top and only dog in the house.
Harris was our first dog child. She was smoochy, loving, daring, inquisitive, loyal, energetic, exhausting and patient. The support she offered me while I was in early labour with the Snork Maiden is something I will never forget and the way she gracefully accepted each new baby into the family was amazing.
Dr. P wrote a poem for Harris and I have compiled some photos of her from years past. There aren't nearly enough to show how beautiful she was, but as always, our best memories are in our hearts.

Harris and Sniff with their cousins Rodney and Reg

Harris

Our tweedy, wriggly Harris pup,
Tearing round with that crazy bum-scooting run,
Would be worn out yapping from the car window,
Or between swallow sprints lie panting, done.

At storms to bark, the horn to howl, the mower to yip.
To stalk dogs and possums, pigs and bunnies.
To bound recklessly into creeks,
Sport a torn ear, a swollen lip.

But she was a gentle soul, 
A purring dog with an ear-flapping head shake,
Who insistently nosed your elbow for a pat,
And lay dreaming with legs twitching and muffled yelps.

Dreaming of swallows.

Ballet photos 2013

Two months have flown by and I have so much to put on this blog that I don't know where to start!

I'll ease into it with a few photos of the girls in their ballet costumes. 

First up, Miss Moomintroll as one of the 12 Dancing Princesses attended by some Golden Nymphs.

And now Miss Snork Maiden as a dancer from Napoli, a gypsy, a bluebird and a contemporary person.

Volcanoes - Saturday Science

Hi there - this is P again after a Saturday Science session on volcanoes.  We've always wanted to make a volcano and it seemed like a great way to get back into some Saturday Science after getting out of the routine for a few weeks.  We started by thinking about what's inside the Earth.  It's very hot in there, so hot that rock melts and is called "magma".  When magma breaks through the surface we call it "lava".  All that separates us from the magma below is a crust of cooled, solid rock.  How thick is the crust?  H, R and K made their guesses on the picture above.  It turns out, if the Earth were an apple, the crust would be about half the thickness of the apple skin!  This is still tens of kilometres thick, but you get the idea.

The crust is broken into tectonic plates which float on the magma below.  Where plates push into each other mountains form (like the Himalayas).  A fun way to model this is with pancakes floating on maple syrup!

The pushing and rubbing also creates heat and releases trapped gas and this is why volcanoes often form where plates meet.  Time to go outside and build some volcanoes!

Take a jar, surround it with soil, add some warm water, sodium bicarbonate, detergent and food dye.  Then pour in vinegar and watch the eruption!

Vinegar reacts with the sodium bicarbonate to release carbon dioxide gas.  This bubbles up in the detergent and causes a magnificent eruption.  Heat causes carbon dioxide to be released also, which is what happens when you cook with self raising flour, and also when carbonate rocks are heated.  Our homemade volcanoes erupted many times until at last our supplies ran out.  It was a lot of fun.  We finished with a great National Geographic video of real volcanoes in action.