Life On Top of The Mound

 We were on top of the mound today and we were looking in lots of the puddles to see if we could find any living things, and we did, and this is what we found:

We Found Frog Spawn

When we were collecting water for our ecosystem jars, we found some frogs spawn in the pond!!! Or we think it is frog spawn.

Measuring The Water We Use In Our House

I have been measuring water and electricity as well as heat that we use in our house and have made charts of the readings. The average amount of water we use is 276 litres. Some days we have used more water than other days and that is because we do things like have baths and showers or wash a big load of dishes. Here is the chart.

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.)

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.