Lifetime Lab, Cork IE  14th Feb. 2014.

See you at The LifeTime Lab in Cork on Fri. 14th Feb. 

RDS Primary Science Fair.

We participated in The RDS Primary Science Fair for the first time ever on Thursday 9th January. It was a brilliant experience. Our project attracted loads of attention and visitors. Here we are with Mr.Séan Sherlock, TD.  Minister of State at The Department of Education and Skills with responsibility for Innovation and Research. We got to visit the other Primary and Secondary stands, met loads of people and gathered up some great ideas. We began the journey to Dublin at 5;00am. arrived at 8:30am., had a full active day and were back at at school again at 8:30pm.

 We have got great media exposure in The Kerryman, The Corkman and The Sliabh Luachra Outlook. We were also strongly supported with a dollar donation from The Irish-American Partnership from Boston, Mass., USA. which we hereby acknowledge.

See you next next year !!!

R576 and The River Feale.

In which direction is the River Feale flowing? Is the local mountain range, Mullach a'Radharc latitudinal or longitudinal? Why so? By extension are the Kerry/Cork mountain ranges latitudinal or longitudinal?
Why is the R576 running parallel with The River Feale? Measure the length of the River Feale from source to sea as the crow flies. Compare your result with its official length. Note the flowing directions of the tributaries. 

Contours and Settlements.

This map illustrates and explores contour lines  in our natural and man made countryside. Mathematically what do contour lines tell us? Can you read contour lines? Why are they important? Can you draw a conclusion on the location of the settlements you see? Why did those settlements originate and develop at a particular location in this map?

Schools in North Cork, West Limerick and North Kerry.Why ?

This post is an extension of the last post but in a large scale.It is a mine of data. As in the last post each school is waypointed with a red marker. In the dynamic page which we use in real lessons we can source the amount of students in each school, the Electoral Division Population and the County Population in Kerry, Cork and Limerick. This is important to us as we have pupils on roll from the three counties. We will group the schools in < 50, 50-99, 100-150, 151-199, 200-250, 251+. We can also work out which scools are 2-Teacher, 3-Teacher, 4- Teacher and so on.

There are also interesting comparisons to be made with the Electoral Division populations.

Waypointing 6 Neighbouring Schools.

Fiinding one's bearing is very important in any situation. Here we waypoint 6 neighbouring schools. Once again the River Feale is a striking natural feature. We will base our report on the schools' locations relative to the river and the similiar and contrasting terrain. We will also note the flow of the many tributaries. We will also examine what we think is the existing land usage.

Statistics: Cork/Kerry Birth Origins of 2011.

In the dynamic page we can see Birth Origins in County Cork, in County Kerry or in both counties. The 6 parameters used are as follows:

Origin...Irish, Poland, Lithuania, UK., Rest of EU and Rest of The World.

The data is further manipulated and produced by the students in a 3-D Pie Chart format which we will upload shortly.

Statistics: Population Change in Knockaclarig 2006-2011.

This map introduces the concepts of % increase and % decrease. We have 2 known variables 2006 Population and 2011 Population. We can therefore find the unknown variable in two formats ...numeric increase/decrease and % increase/decrease. The same system works in calculating Cash Profit/Loss and % Profit/Loss.

This authentic and local source of data illustrates the realism of this far reaching mathematical concept.

Another Dramatic Profile.  Analyse !!!

This dramatic profile presents us many varied features. Let's write a scientific report on our findings.

Three Rivers: Three Different Directions ???

In this situation we focus on three major rivers in our locality...The Feale, The Blackwater and The Maigue.We notice the general directions in which the rivers flow. Each river flows in a different direction. Why so? We use the earlier contour map to understand this arguement and to determine which river flows the fastest.
Can you come up with other questions and arguements?

Flight GOOGLED.

When embedded in GOOGLE  Earth we get an idea of the terrain.

As the Crow flies........................................................

This operation uses the measurement tool to estimate distances i.e. (A to B) situations.

Tour Guide.

Our software has a facility to take us on a simulated tour of the captured routes. Unfortunately this screen grab does not do the facility justice as it is indeed static. However we can share the experience in dynamic mode.

Keeping us in Relativity.

Here we look around and see we are in the bigger scheme of county and provincial location.The zoom in, zoom out utility is important for this type of task.

Macro GOOGLED.

Once again we capture, manipulate, analyse, form opinions, debate, edit, decide, finalise and present in GOOGLE.

Macro Capture.

This is a bigger undertaking. Can you point out the 3 Rivers. Itemise the icons and study the Road Numbers. Within The National Roadwork network what is the status of the roads in the capture and manipulation? Name two major towns.

Working with Bigger Inputs.

We are using a more extensive profile here. Based on the earlier profile investigate and document a data analysis on this profile.

Speed, Time and Distance.

Here we delve into the quite abstract concepts of Speed,Time and Distance. Using our dataset and obscuring one of the three elements we can work out any problem in this mathematical scenario and see through investigation how formulae are arrived at. Of course we are working, in many cases here with decimal numbers and this adds a certain rigour to our problem solving.

DISTANCE = TIME X SPEED per HOUR.

TIME = DISTANCE / SPEED per HOUR.

SPEED = DISTANCE / TIME.

Base of 60 for TIME
Bases of 10,100,1000 for DISTANCE.

We also introduce and use calculators/handhelds for these complex calculations.

Knockatoon GOOGLED

Here we embed the captured and manipulated data in Google Maps adding more enhancement the personalised output.

Is this an urban or rural setting/ Give your reasons.

The Road to Knockatoon.

This is Eoin's Journey home. Here he is making strong usage of the icons and this is adding to his map. Using his home as a benchmark work out his neighbours' locations North of The Feale and South of The Feale. Also who lives N. S, W, E of Eoin?/