Monday 25 November 2013

Science, Science, Everywhere

This Tuesday, our year went to Tallaght IT for a science talk as part of Science Week. The talk was called Extraordinary Science (except they spelled it like Xtra-ordinary which made me uncomfortable). The speaker had an English accent and, seriously, you should have heard the gasp that erupted around the room when everyone discovered it.
The first experiment he showed us was an experiment that was done by Galileo off the Leaning Tower of Pisa: Galileo dropped two balls of different masses off the tower to prove that their time of descent was independent from their masses. The speaker demonstrated this with two bottles, one filled with liquid.

Another experiment he did was with a home made spud gun. He got two massive pole things and pumped one full of potato and fired the potato across the room. This was to demonstrate the spring of air. It was very cool, but he fired it at us and, considering the fact that I hate potatoes quite a bit, I wasn't too happy about this. Still very cool, though.

And then he made something explode. I may have shrieked. He didn't just explode something for fun though, it was to show the difference between hydrogen and helium. He told us to guess the gas inside a balloon. It was lighter than air, so we figured it had to be hydrogen or helium. Then he told us that helium is an inert gas, meaning it is non-reactive, and hydrogen is reactive. So, he did something funky to it and it exploded with a very loud bang. Therefore, it must have been hydrogen. Cool stuff, right?

It was a very interesting day, and I learned a lot. After the talk we stopped off in Liffey Valley to get some food, which certainly helped. We returned to school with high spirits and I for one felt a little bit smarter than I did when I had left. I think everyone enjoyed it as much as I did!

Science Week logo 2013

Friday 15 November 2013

School on a Saturday, I may be crazy

Last Saturday was our school's open day for the incoming first years. I think it's safe to say all who were involved sold the school pretty well.
I was part of the music department, along with a load of other people. Ms. G. talked to all the students about what the music department offers and all the extra curricular activities (such as choir, orchestra, etc.) while people played background music. It was all really well organised. I think what really sold the music department, though, was the cup song. We handed out cups to all the incoming students and the people who were helping out led the song. Here's the original if you want to hear it!



The open day ended early, so we all got out some sweets as a reward for all our (kind of) hard work. Afterwards, I went with a friend to the UCD open day, and I gotta say I found it very impressive. I wanted to skip fifth and sixth year and go straight to college, but unfortunately I believe that is, well, impossible.

I really hope you enjoy being updated on my rather mundane life. More news (if you can call it that) next time!