The junior journal issue 4 june 2016 single pages

BRRRR! Happy Winter! It’s a BUMPER issue!

Hi Junior Engineers! First of all, we have to say a huge thank you to all the junior engineers and their families

who came along to The Frankston Good Friday Family Fun Day! We loved mee�ng you all and were very im-

pressed with your crea�ve construc�ons and scien�fic curiosity! It was our first event and we were so happy

with the way it all went. Rebecca Savage from Savage A�rac�ons has invited us back next year. Here are a few

snaps from the day.

Winter �me is the perfect �me for lots of construc�on, cra( and ex-

periments. It is also a good �me for old fashioned board games, card

games and computer games. But if you’d really like to experience the

season, make some �me to go to The Big Freeze Fes�val at Cran-

bourne Racecourse this Winter School Holidays from Saturday July 2-

Sunday July 10. We will be there on Friday 8th July and are very excit-

ed to bring you icy experiments, chilly construc�ons and cool ac�vi�es.

You can play in the snow, make a snowman, and so many more fun

Winter ac�vi�es without having to trek to the mountains! Hope to see

you there! More informa�on at www.thebigfreezefes�val.com.au

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JournalJournalJournalJournalJournalJournalJournalJournalJournalJournalJournalJournal Issue 4 June 2016

Please help

name me!

I’m having an

iden�ty

In honour of World Environment Day on

June 5th, we’ve included a li�le packet of

things for you to grow. There are seeds all

around us. Some of your favourite seeds

might be dandelions. I bet you’ve made a

wish or just had fun blowing a full ball of

�ny parachutes into the sky! Another seed

that I really love are ‘copters.’ They are

spinning seeds that maple

trees produce and they

make the most of their

‘wing’ to flu8er all

around, giving the tree

Science—Garden Detective

Flash Game Tuts is an online resource that teaches kids how to use

different sorts of code to build games. Follow this link h8p://

www.flashgametuts.com/tutorials/as3/how-to-create-a-game-like-

winter-bells-in-as3-part-1/ to be introduced to a tutorial about cre-

a�ng a game like “Winter Bells”. In this game, the snow bunny

jumps from bell to bell accumula�ng points for each successful bell

hop. So much fun!

Speaking of which, can you tell apart the seeds from the bulbs in your pack-

et? Seeds and bulbs come in all sorts of shapes. I can give you a big hint:

one of your seeds is a pea and the other is a bean. Plant them both at the

same �me and have a race to see which will sprout first and which will grow

the highest! Both will need to be planted to a depth of 5 cm and both will

need watering and a sunny spot to grow. Both are climbing plants and so

should have a stake to support them as they’ll want to grow up! The other

two are bulbs. They have a pointy end and at the other end, there’s a flat sec�on where the roots will grow.

Plant so that the pointy end points up, and the roots down. Bulbs also need to be in a sunny spot and also need

to be planted to a depth of 5 cm. Both your bulbs are different flowers and their iden�ty will be a secret and a

surprise for you when they grow. As an extra surprise, both flowers will be differently shaped from each other. All

can be planted in June. Have fun growing these vegies and flowers!

the best chance of having its seeds grow.

For Frozen fans, Code Studio has a step-by-step tutorial

that will help you learn how to code and move Elsa

across the screen in the direc�on of your choosing.

Once you’ve mastered this, you can get more complex

with your commands and write code so that Elsa or

Anna can create a snowflake by ska�ng on ice! Check

out: h'ps://studio.code.org/s/frozen/stage/1/puzzle/1

for the full program. Such beau�ful pa'erns!

Technology— Coding for Winter

Engineering—Building with snow Some of you might know your way around snow, but for most of us, snow is a mys�cal thing that happens in oth-

er people’s lives. I’ve been researching the best way to make a snowman. Engineers say that you need to work

with wet snow. I thought, that’s funny, isn’t all snow wet? But there’s a difference between types of snow, just

like there’s a difference between types of rain, it’s all water, but the density of the flake or drop changes depend-

ent on other weather condi�ons. Wet snow, like wet sand, holds shape very well. Water

in liquid form acts like glue s�cking snow to more snow, enabling big snowballs to be

built.

Here are the top �ps:

1. Build on a flat surface

2. When you make balls or spheres out of snow, you are building a strong structure. Other shapes don’t dis-

tribute forces evenly.

3. If you are building a snowman using more than one sphere, the biggest sphere needs to be at the bo8om

and the smallest sphere at the top. Try to build in propor�on. Two or three spheres are a good number,

any more, well, that adds up to a lot of weight for each sphere to support.

4. Don’t build with powdery snow. You’ll need a snow to water ra�o of 5:1 for snow to s�ck together. Pack

the snow firmly. If you haven’t, there will be stress fractures in the sphere that will cause it to collapse.

The bigger your snowman, the more prone it will be to collapse.

5. Don’t forget a hat, carrot and eyes! And have fun!

Mathematics—Symmetry

When you think about it, most of Maths is about symmetry, in

arithme�c and algebra, one side of the equa�on equals the other.

Nature also likes symmetry. People are symmetrical; our right

side of our body is almost a mirror image of the le( side of our

body. Snowflakes are symmetrical along three different planes,

ver�cally, diagonally from right to le( and diagonally from le( to

right. Try making your own snowflake by folding a piece of paper

in half, half again and half again, cuHng out a pa8ern on both

sides of the triangle you’ve formed. You could be really clever

and check out this website to form a six sided snowflake!

Try to centre each sphere,

or your wobbly snowman

will not last long!

Sourced from: h8p://alphamom.com/family-

fun/holidays/how-to-make-a-paper-snowflake

-tutorial/

How to Make a Paper Snowflake

This snowman is symmetrical, un�l you add a carrot nose!

Use your dice and race friends to draw a snowman. You’ll

need to roll a 1 and a 6 before any of the other numbers will

count! First one to draw their snowman wins!

Roll a 1 for the body

Roll a 2 for each eye

Roll a 3 for the carrot

Roll a 4 for the hat

Sourced from Helen Thompson Do You

Want To Build A Snowman? Physics

can help. h'p://

www.smithsonianmag.com/science-

nature/do-you-want-build-snowman-

physics-180954024/?no-ist

[email protected]

is proudly supported by e-struct consul�ng engineers.

www.facebook.com/groups/estructjuniorengineers

Below: Our clever junior engineers exploring STEM! Have you

been growing crystals? Building pizza shops? Making a rain

gauge? Crea�ng a bunny burrow? Blowing up balloons, welcom-

ing a new pet into your home or have you celebrated a birth-

day? We love receiving your photos!

Above:

Congratula�ons to all our compe��on win-

ners! We hope that you have fun with

your prizes!

By the way, we need your

crea�ve minds to help us

solve this problem!

This cute li8le robot, who

has been designed by

Hilary Cresp of Essayer,

needs a name! We’re

running a cool giveaway

and could really use your

Snowy STEMSnowy STEMSnowy STEMSnowy STEM The Three Mountains Problem

Can you solve this problem using the three building s�ckers and the three people s�ckers supplied in your ac�vity pack?

You must use all the s�ckers to solve this problem.

CLUE 1: Before you s�ck the s�ckers…. Only one building will fit on each mountain. Each mountain must have one of the

buildings stuck to it. The clues below will help you work out which mountain has which building on it.

CLUE 2: Each person visited a different mountain. There is only room for one person on each mountain. The clues below

will help you work out which mountain each person visited, or will tell you which building each person visited.

CLUE 3: The policeman is visi�ng the tallest mountain.

CLUE 4: The house is on top of the smallest mountain.

CLUE 5: The fireman is at the fire sta�on.

CLUE 6: The Pos�e is not at the shop. © Bridie Briggs 2016

Snowy STEMSnowy STEMSnowy STEMSnowy STEM The Chill Factor: Arguing Explorers

A(er two hours, the girl explorer had walked 10 kilometres and the boy explorer had walked 5 kilometres. Both

explorers had walked due south. But the difference in the distance between them was not 5 kilometres, but 15

kilometres! How was that possible? Source: Heimann, R. (1990) Preposterous Puzzles, Periscope Press: Hawthorn.

A(er marching side-by-side for three weeks, these two explorers were sick of each other. As soon as they had reached

their des�na�on and had taken their scien�fic measurements, this conversa�on happened:

If I have to spend another

day with you, I’ll go crazy.

I simply can’t stand your

complaining all day long!

And I can’t stand your snoring all night long. I

wouldn’t stay with you if you paid me.

In fact, I’ll start on my way back right now. Don’t

you start for another hour, so that there will always

be 5 kilometres between us!

There’s no Business, like Snow Business

Seven kids had each built a snowman.

They approached a carpenter with a

request:

“We’d like each snowman to have his

own space but we’ve only got enough

wood to build three long straight fences.

We can’t work out where they can go.”

Can you?

Adapted from: Pinkey, J. (1992) The Big

Book of Puzzles, Riddles & Muddles, The Five

-Mile Press: Balwyn.

S 1 N 2 O 3 W 4

N 2

O 3

W 4

This word square reads the same across and down.

Here are the clues to complete it.

CLUE 2: Number

CLUE 3: On a single occasion

CLUE 4: Unwelcome garden plant

Adapted from: Pinkey, J. (1992) The Big Book of Puzzles, Riddles

& Muddles, The Five-Mile Press: Balwyn.

Snowy STEM Snowy STEM Snowy STEM Snowy STEM Answers

Why have we sent you a hand?

Hands mean so much. When we meet people for the first time, or are reunited

with them, we offer our hands in friendship, we speak with our hands, we cre-

ate music with our hands, we applaud the efforts and performances of others

with our hands and we reassure and soothe loved ones with our hands. From

ancient times, the first people in Australia left their unique marks on rock walls

creating hand stencils. Children’s hands appear at children’s heights, more

important tribal members had their stencils appear higher and only the most

important tribal members were able to stencil their whole arm. Hand stencils

are sometimes arranged to form bigger and more complex pictures.

Sea of Hands origins

The Sea of Hands was conceived in 1997. It was created by ANTaR. The Sea

of Hands is Australia's public art installation and it colourfully represents the

names of over 300,000 Australians who have shown their support for native

title and reconciliation.

We wanted our junior engineers to be a part of this gesture. In your own way,

decorate your hand and maybe have a think about how learning about the past

helps us to create a future filled with understanding.

At e-struct, we gratefully acknowledge and

appreciate the Boonwurrung people and

during this week especially, seek to

acknowledge their legacy.

The Three Mountain Problem:

Smallest Mountain = Pos�e, house; Medium Mountain = Fire-fighter, Fire brigade; Tallest Mountain = Policeman, Shop.

The Chill Factor

The two explorers had their disagreement at The North Pole. Every direc�on you walk from the North Pole is South. The

two explorers waled in exactly opposite direc�ons. That’s why there is 15 kilometres between them.

No Business Like Snow Business

S 1 N 2 O 3 W 4

N 2 I N E

O 3 N C E

W 4 E E K

Snowy STEM Snowy STEM Snowy STEM Snowy STEM Bonus Activities!

Extra Puzzles! Extra Puzzles! Extra Puzzles! Extra Puzzles!

Pop on your snow shoes and make your way

through the maze to the North Pole. How

many differences can you find between the

snowmen?