Interesting Week
It’s been a very short week and when I entered it normally on Wednesday I really felt out of sync – I’d totally missed my library duty and lost track of what was happening in a big way. It took me some time to adjust to the normal running of the school! This was all because I had an inset day on Monday and then a school trip on Tuesday. The former passed uneventfully enough, but I was a little bored at some points and was ashamed that I was unable to entertain myself properly. Tuesday was a great trip to Sheffield Hallam University for a look at industrial scale food making equipment. I arrived early, as always, to find Alex and the teacher hovering around the entrance hall. It was then discovered after several ring-rounds that the course was not as Psalter Lane Campus, where we were, but instead at City Campus, all the way smack bang in the middle of the busy town centre! So we waited for everyone else to arrive and then struggled down on the bus, and I only hope that the teacher was able to claim back the bus fare for about twenty children on the school finance system. It was all quite amusing, but things did get sorted out in the end and we were able to enjoy the trip. First we had to get all kitted out in white coats, and we took a look around a microbiology lab. We did a test of our handwashing skills and mine were almost perfect, the only exception being around the nails; by far the best in the class. We then donned a different set of white coats and washed our hands with knee-operated taps and foot-operated bins, plus hair nets (on EVERYONE ^_^). We did some taste-testing, which was interesting because of the rules and randomisation involved. Several people went off to a proper testing room where different coloured lights stopped them from subconciously interpreting the colour of the food in relation to its taste – but I am informed that it doesn’t work very well. After lunch we saw the equipment and some students working, and the demonstrator made some ice cream which we promptly polished off.
Saturday presented another trip offering, the Eleventh Sheffield Popmaths quiz. I arrived extremely early, as before, and was first there from our school. My teacher arrived shortly afterwards and then we had to wait for ages before the rest of the pupils and teachers arrived. Of course the sixth-form team considered themselves so vastly superior that they didn’t meet with us and instead spent the time in a café. When Mr Christopher came around later and asked for a spare calculator (I’d brought two) because none of them had thought to bring one I wasn’t best pleased, as you can probably imagine. The quiz was fun, but we only scored 60%. We did have a team member missing (down to five from six), but it was still annoying because we really felt that we’d have done better. Surprisingly, I did best with the geometry questions. Tactics were very important – questions were fired off every three minutes and so we had to divide our resources to get ones that we had missed done. Afterwards, it was time for the maths lecture. I wandered across the complex to the Adsetts Centre, and found a seat. It was most interesting: using an old credit card and an upside-down bicycle, the lecturer developed a system for working out the notes in a musical scale mathematically. It was all very interesting, and by the passing of notes I introduced raptor_bob to the idea of ‘Brown Noise’, which he found most sickening, especially the fact that it was recently broadcast across the nation. They projected a graphics calculator up on a screen during the second half, with different lecturers, it was a TI-83+ SE. There were some interesting things going on but only the sixth formers were probably grasping it, and I was getting a rough idea of most of it. It wasn’t really aimed very well, but it was still very interesting. Then I went and grabbed a panini for my lunch, bought some books and caught the bus home.
SilentFlame went down around Thursday/Friday, and it was really annoying. More can be read on the SilentFlame blog here. I’ve also been getting into VisualBasic.NET, and have a new program for SilentFlame clients in the works – contact me if you are a customer or not and you feel like a little beta-testing.
Ho hum. Cya.
Did you take the exact same (popmaths) quiz as the sixth-formers? If so, I think you did quite well getting 60% correct – they’ve had 3-4 more years of maths than you, which would easily account for the 40% you missed on the quiz. Just wait till you’re a sixth-former!
I can just picture your group wolfing down that ice cream. Was it good?
No, it was a lot easier. Different age categories had different questions – so we were rubbish
Yes, it was great ice cream! But how can you picture us? We have several pictures being put up around the school of us in hairnets
Thanks for starting to read my blog again.
Now your blog is readable again, I read it too…
The 6th formers going to the cafe is a famous tradition (as invented by me).
You did fairly well (not as well as when I was in year 7 – we came second despite me and some else beoing to ill to attend
)
Yes, but there is a difference between us and you – you can do maths, we can’t