Category: Hanga | Create

On 19th May I tested the force of gravity with building a parachute to slow down or create air resistance and safely landing with an egg attached to the contraption. I have done this experiment so I could see the amount of air resistance against the contraption safely towards the ground, without cracking. I also wanted to see what me and my team could do to create the most air resistance.

Me and my team chose to do this kind of design to our “parachute” to stop the impact of our egg to crack. The contraption is meant to stop the egg from cracking even if the parachute fails. This is because of the structure made of straws which reduces the amount of force onto the egg to make it crack when landing so heavily.

Steps in doing this experiment included:

1. Take all the materials you need in making the design
2. test it without the egg to see if it has a good amount of air resistance
3. After you are confident with your design place an egg in your design where it is stable and won’t crack
4. Then go up to place about 4-5 metres high with a person up high and one down to how long the contraption will fall.
5. I hope that your egg has survived when letting go of the design in time with the time keeper.

When I dropped the contraption, it took 0.809 seconds to reach the floor but still the egg survived the fall 2 times. Our contraption was very different from everyone else’s because of the way we made it. It was a pyramid shape contraption, with straws over the length of the actual pyramid, and when the egg gets hit on impact in the design it wouldn’t break, because of the edges.

Some people’s parachutes feel faster or slower than others depending on how much air resistance it has on the design, like making a parachute, which slows it down significantly if placed correctly. But the forces were very much unbalanced for most people and a couple people could make the forces balanced

DNA is a tiny, long molecule that looks like a twisted ladder, which is inside all living things, with trillions of cells, each have a nucleus and in those nuclei are 46 chromosomes, which are made of DNA. DNA acts like the blueprint for your genes and traits/alleles, which creates a code only you can interpret. Each nucleotide inside DNA has a phosphate, a sugar, and a base, which represents one of the following letters: A, T, C, or G. These letters combined make a code for your traits, which then lead to a section called genes. Genes are sections in DNA that code for a particular trait, such as hair, eyes, and much more. Different types of the same genes are called alleles, which determine most living things’ phenotypes, like the colour of eyes, the colour of hair, and more. Alleles can be inherited from ancestors or parents based on the chances and the coding of the parents’ DNA. Inheritance means to have a characteristic, trait, or quality passed on to you at birth. Chances of inheriting alleles from ancestors or parents are predicted using a diagram called a Punnett square. This diagram shows what could happen when a set of parental chromosomes combines to give one possible outcome.

Natural selection is a fundamental mechanism. When organisms are better suited to an environment, they are better able to survive and reproduce, while individuals not suited to the environment will die off, and won’t be able to reproduce to offsprings, because of unsuccessful parents. In this way, the environment ‘selects’ the best individuals/living organisms. For eg, if a giraffe with alleles with longer necks will survive and do the reproduction phase with other giraffes, whereas giraffes with shorter necks, as their alleles, die off and don’t reproduce those alleles to offsprings. The process of reproduction includes a successful mate with alleles suited to the environment and create off springs so they can be successful and do the same cycle their parents did. Evolution is the process of changes in the frequency of alleles in a population over many generations, as a result of natural selection. For evolution to occur, four conditions must apply: individuals in a population must survive and reproduce, survival is not random, there must be a variation in a population, and the beneficial traits possessed by survivors must be inheritable, which should be passed on to offspring.

26th February TITAN

I participated on a activity called drawing pairs that correlated with key concepts because we had to communicate with each each other and it was with mostly with friends then with other people so we could be confident to talk to each other. The main rules of the game we played was that we weren’t allowed to look at each other because one of us were drawing and the other was saying step by step methods in drawing an accurate picture by just communicating.

My Hauora was affected by participating in the activity called  Drawing Pairs because it was affected positively, by communicating with your friends, which was Taha whanau, and it was impacted positively as we had to describe how to make it easy for the person drawing the picture really accurate.During the game interpersonal was mostly used than personal, and societal because we were with pairs and had to communicate really descriptively for the person drawing to understand. Overall The impacts of my Hauora interrelate as mostly Taha whanau than the others because of mostly communication and mostly relying on the person describing the picture that should be drawn, and the other person to draw the shapes and lines where there supposed to be.

The social justice value of inclusiveness was shown when everyone was participating,as it was a two player game, and that communicating was a skill mostly used in the game, so it was hard not be included.

the participation of individuals and groups can impact a class’s Hauora during an activity by creating greater and stronger bonds of communication, and improving your mental and emotional state. This is because the more communication, the more confident you speak ; and for emotional and mental well-being this can be affected by controlling emotions while talking and mentally, thinking about what your going to say.

The key concepts interrelate with teamwork,communication active listening and perception because it forces the pairs to communicate verbally,create a drawing and draw a picture based on the image the person is describing to the person who has no idea what to draw.

The purpose of this activity was to make a zombie with different alleles,dominant and recessive, and draw your zombie to the punnet squares description.

The method to this activity was to choose what alleles your zombie could have like hair colour,eye colour, etc. We could choose which of the zombies parents could have genotypes like Bb, bb or BB for the alleles they have. After choosing what genotypes the zombies parents have then you fill out the boxes in the punnet square to see what percentage your zombie could have, to be a pink haired zombie, or a green skin zombie ,etc.

Gene means a small part of DNA that codes for one of your traits,for eg hair colour.

Allele means the different versions of the same gene like blue vs red,purple vs yellow, etc.

Phenotype means the physical appearance seen by the naked eye.

Genotype are two inherited alleles by parents and not seen by the naked eye, which are internal.

The way to fill out punnet squares is if there are all ready two alleles for mother and father you fill the out by for eg If mother has BB and dad has BB you put one capital B with a little b in one square and the same in the other because there are two dominant alleles and two recessive which means it will always be something that is inherited by mother but you still have an allele from your father which is still with you but can’t be seen. The point to fill out punnet squares is to show what are the chances to get that trait from your parents.

My Activity worked and I would change drawing the zombie because it really isn’t zombified as I thought it would be. But other than that I showed a great understanding about punnet squares,genes,alleles,phenotypes, and genotypes.

The activity that I did on 17th February 2026 was building a whare out of paper to show the four areas of Haoura, which is shown on the left.(it wasn’t that good)

My Haoura was affected positively by participating in the activity, contributing to the activity, and communicating with my classmates in what should we have done to make an awesome masterpiece, which covered mostly Taha whanau, and Taha hinengaro because for mental well being your focused on a task that should be done which no emotions can interrupt unless a classmates decides to asks for help. Overall the impacts on my Haoura interrelate with Taha whanau and Taha hinengaro positively because me and my classmates are strengthening the well-being s of them two to create a better and stronger bond and more controllable.

The values of social justice were not and were shown at the same time because it was a hard task to do, making a building of paper (in my opinion) and most of my group contributed well, but some Didn’t want to contribute, and didn’t want to try. The social justice value of inclusiveness was trying to be shown but didn’t really succeed for some people when our task was supposed to make something out of playdough to resemble something to do with Haoura.

The participation of individuals and groups can impact a class’s Haoura during an activity because without contributing you try to strengthen

During the experiment I was interested and kind of confused in what was going to happen because some chunks went into the test tube which I thought that it wouldn’t work as well, but I could still see little strands of DNA. One thing that I learnt from this experiment is that I did not know that I could see DNA without any technology like a microscope because of how small they are. One or two uses of DNA extraction is that you can see what is wrong with DNA, like a disease,flu etc, and find a cure for it or, you could DNA to solve crimes at a murder scene or others.

The aim for this experiment was to extract DNA and see the strands of DNA that fruit had, and to understand more about cells and why DNA is in every made up living thing.

The method for this experiment

1. grab a zip lock bag, and put strawberries or a banana inside
2. put a bit of detergent,1/2 teaspoon of salt and a splash of water
3. Now mix/squish until big clumps turn into liquid or have turned smaller.
4. grab a beaker and a cloth that isn’t as thick
5. then pour in the liquid through the cloth into the beaker until you have no liquid left in your plastic bag.
6. next get a test tube, pour what is in the beaker in the test tube
7. then clean the beaker and fill it up with hot water
8. put the test tube inside the hot water beaker and wait a bit for the test tube  to become a bit warm
9. lastly put a thin layer of ethanol in the test tube which makes a layer on top of the fruit liquid.
10. now take a look pick or a kebab stick to take out one strand of DNA and there you have it

My experiment didn’t work as well but I was still able to see some of the strands of DNA and this was because our fruit liquid wasn’t as liquidy as supposed to and some clumps of banana managed to sneak into the beaker. One thing I did well in my experiment is that I put the right things to make this experiment work but, if I had to do that again I would’ve picked the strawberries. Next time I would improve on not taking the banana,don’t leave any clumps in the bag,and to not make it as thick the liquid.

4th February, I did the Treaty of Waitangi task, learning about what happened then: The Treaty of Waitangi

12th of February, I did the Wairau Valley affair, and I did a storyboard which was practical.

On 20th February, I completed two tasks on the Northern Wars. One was about an AI interpretation, and another here is a link: Sebastian 10C Battle of Ruapekapeka

4th March, I did a task about the Battle of Gate Pa. Here is the link: Causes of the Battle of Gate Pā

11th March, I did a task about the consequences of the NZ Wars: Consequences of the NZ Wars

30th April, I did a graph about the population of Christchurch from 1950 to 2025: Sebastian SOS graph

On 8th May, I completed a task to show that healthy products cost more than unhealthy ones:Choices,Conflict and Clinics

we chose a way of choosing a sport by voting once for either octopus,bench ball,basketball,volleyball and football and most chose bench ball but eventually did volleyball because of the gym taken.

My stress score is moderate. One activity that could help my stress is to have fresh air and breath slowly and controllable.

1. Netball was first played in England late 1890’s
2. who discovered it:Dr. James Naismith
3. how many players in a team:seven players
4. what are the positions in Netball:GS,GA,WA,C,WD,GD,GK
5. what is the size of the netball court: 50 ft by 100 ft
6. name 5 rules of netball:no stepping with the ball,can’t hold the ball for more than three seconds, a 3-foot defensive rule must be maintained, players must stay within their designated areas on the court,and only the goal attack and the goal shooter can score goals from within the goal circle