Grant Alternative School Science Committee

A water barometer A very useful tool. Every classroom should have one. Our school has several. Get a bottle with a good top. Get about 1 metre of clear tubing, the kind that is used for aquariums works well. Drill a hole in the bottle top so that the tube fits through it tighly. Put some water with food colouring in the bottle. Enough so that the tubing, when pushed to the bottom, is covered. You need lots of air in the bottle for this to work. Put the top on tightly. Seal it with silicone if you want. Either hang it by the tube, or mount it on a vertical piece of wood with tape around the bottle to take the pressure off the tubing. It's a good idea to leave it for about 1/2 hour to be sure the temperature is stable. Blow in the top of the tube until you hear see a few bubbles. When you stop blowing the water will go up the tube. You can make it go higher by blowing more bubbles. Leave it for a few days, using a clothes pin or something similar to mark where the level is. As the weather changes, it will go up and down. High pressure will push the water down the tube. Low pressure will let it rise. It should move up and down about 40cm. Easily seen from anywhere in the classroom.
Halloween 2001. This year, the "Professor" enjoyed his first year of retirement so poor old "Igor" had to blow up things on his own. Just a few problems like, the pumpkin wouldn't explode and the gummie bear kept burning. There was a lot of smoke in the gym.
Of course, we were at the Grant BBQ. With Water Rockets. Look at some of the movies.	Rocket Launch videos one two three four five taken with our new Sony Mavica F85 digital camera.
	The April meeting was about Kite Making. Two giant kites were brought as a display. The one on the left doesn't normally have a small child in it. We made one small fighter kite. The gardening/environment committee joined us in the library.

Water Rockets

launcher.jpg (16909 bytes)

The giant thermometer

Wincar02b.jpg (4180 bytes)

The Math, Science and Computer committee at Grant Alternative School has been an active part of the school since it opened in 1991.

Latest News

In the night sky, you may still be able to see Mercury and Jupiter in the west just as the Sun goes down.

As it gets darker, you will start to see Mars reappear from it's journey around the other side of the Sun.( more info).

You may have noticed that IO has some new question forms. Yes, IO is open for business again! If you have a science question, fill out a form and place it in IO’s mouth. We will get an answer for you and send it to your classroom teacher. IO is the thing in the library that looks a bit like a robot. There's an image of it at the top right of this page. It’s been in the school for a number of years now and well over 500 questions have gone through it’s mouth. You can read some of the answers posted on Pierre's web-site. http://pierrekerr.ca/askio/index.htm

The next science meeting will be on June 13^th. How about a rocket making workshop? Spring is in the air and what better way to celebrate than to build and fly a rocket.

Each rocket will need two 2-litre pop bottles. Other material will be provided.

and DreamWriters will be available and there will be an interesting science video to watch.

Grant Alternative School Math, Science and Computer Team