Putting Up Kitchen Shelves

Today we put up the shelves in our kitchen, it took us quite a while.
I learned how to use a handsaw, a drill and a hand plane. we used a drill to make pilot holes so the screws would not split the wood.


hand plane
drill for making pilot holes
the finished shelves
mom is going to be happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our Heating System

I asked dad to show me how the heating system for our house works because I think it looks so complex.

He showed me how the heat that comes into our house from the district heating system that we have in the village.
First, the hot water comes into a heat exchanger which heats up the water in our big water tank and measures how much heat we use. there is a pump that takes the cold water from the bottom of the tank and runs it through the heat exchanger and puts the heated water back into the top of the tank. There are two thermometers that show us the temperature of both the hot and the cold water. apparently there is two tanks , one inside the other, the smaller one on the inside is for hot water in the taps, and the larger one on the outside is for the hot water in the heating.

There is a pump that pumps hot water from the top of the tank into the manifold which puts the water into different pipes that go through the walls all over the house and the hot water heats up the walls. The cooler water goes back to the top part of the manifold and then back into the bottom of the tank. There is another pump attached to the manifold that helps to even out the heat in the walls when the other pump stops if the water gets too hot. On the manifold there are little valves on each pipe that are controlled by thermostats in each room. The hot water in the taps separate pipe connected to the top of the tank.

(Dad helped me label the photographs,
to get a better view just click on them.)

The Beaver

While we were in Canada a beaver visited my grandparents back garden a few times. It was a very big beaver.



Look how close I got to him/her!!!!!!!!!!!
We watched it eat the bark off of a small tree that it had cut down, and it ate all of the twigs.



He is sitting in water on top of the ice at the side of a river and he is not cold, look at his frozen whiskers!!!!!!!!!!!

Nana's Fish Tank: Volume Problem

PROBLEM:
If Nana wanted to change all the water in the fish tank, how many large bottles worth of water would it take?

WHAT WE KNOW:
1. One water cooler bottle is equal to 5 US gallons. Using a converter we calculated that this is 18.9 litres.
2. One litre of water weighs 1 kilogram (I found this out with a previous experiment).




SOLUTION:
1. How big is a litre?

• We measured a litre carton of milk, using a tape measure.
• It is 7.3cm x 7.3cm x 20 cm high
• 7.3 x 7.3 = 53.29 cm²
• 53.29 x 20 = 1,065.8, we rounded that off to 1,000cm³
• Conclusion: 1 litre is equal to 1000cm³

2. How big is the fish tank?

• We measured the tank and it was 44cm wide, 52 cm high and 88 cm long
• 44 x 52 x 88 = 201,344 cm³ or aprox 200,000 cm³
• Since one litre equals 1000cm³ then 200,000 ÷ 1000 = 200
• Therefore there are 200 litres in Nana's fish tank

3. How many jugs of water are needed?

• We know that one jug is 18.9 litres so 200 litres ÷ 18.9 = 10.5
• Therefore we will need aprox 10.5 jugs of water.

THINGS WE FOUND OUT:
1. 1 litre is equal to 1000 cm³ , we can use a tape measure to figure out the volume of something in litres.

2. If it is water we can also figure out how much it weighs because we know that 1 litre of water weighs 1 kg.