Author: William Carruthers

Driver Education

Uncategorised

This Is my Health poster

What were the biggest things I learnt during the task?

The biggest things I learnt was the sheer number of young people speeding in WA. In a survey around 84% of young drivers admitted to exceeding the speed limit.

I also learnt many other things such as 40% have admitted to being involved in a crash. 73% have admitted to having over-confidence. Many young drivers tend to have a bad ‘it will never happen to me’ attitude.

I was also surprised that inexperience an over-confidence tend to be the cause of deaths and serious injuries of young drivers.

I was also surprised that 75% have been in a car where the driver speeded.

 

What is one piece of advice I would pass on to young drivers above all else?

I would advise young drivers against speeding because that seems to me to be the one of the biggest and most easy rule to break. This is evident in the research done by the survey above.

By speeding you are decreasing your reaction time which is an especially important factor for young drivers because they lack the experience to react fast enough if something goes wrong.

 

My pledge for when I start driving, Why did I pick these and how will I commit to it?

To never speed.

To never drink drive.

To never look on my phone while I drive.

Always watch the road.

Don’t become over-confident.

Always make sure the car is safe to drive beforehand.

Always obey road laws.

Always be a responsible and safe driver.

I picked these because they cover all of the aspects of safe and responsible driving. I will commit to these every time I drive no matter how much I feel like otherwise. I will make sure I commit to these because I understand the consequences if I break them.

Global Goals Project Presentation

Uncategorised

Bat Boxes

Bats are vital animals in our ecosystems. By making Bat Boxes for global goals at all saints and hanging them on a farm in lake grace I am working towards the life on land goal. The Bat Boxes help endangered bats by giving them homes that they lost by deforestation. The bat boxes will also give many positive outcomes to not only the bats but also the farmers and aquatic waterways.

2 – This is another example of a bat box (Note: Most bat boxes are hung is shady areas to prevent bats from overheating)

1 – This is an example of a standard bat box

 

The Global Goals and STEM

3 – this is an example of toxic runoff from crops

For semester 2 I am in a Global Goals project where I have decided to work on life on land goal. My target for this goal is to help the dwindling bat numbers by giving them homes on deforested farmland. By helping the bats and increasing their populations they will eat most of the crop-eating bugs on the farm allowing the farmers to use less pesticide and further helping the life on land goal. This helps the goal as most of the pesticides drain into waterways and cause damage to them killing many fish and aquatic animals. With fewer pesticides used when bat populations increase the damage will be reduced.

 

How Bad is Pesticide Pollution

4 – This map shows the countries and areas most polluted

About 64% of agricultural land is at risk of pesticide pollution caused by the overuse of pesticides. Globally 34% of the high-risk areas are highly biodiverse. 162 Countries are facing this problem caused by 92 chemicals known to be used in agriculture.

5 – This image shows how Pesticides manage to get into our waterways and cause damage

Pesticide pollution is linked to adverse effects on both human and environmental health. Because pesticide pollution is carried by runoffs and waterbodies it hinders the usability of these water sources.

 

The Design Process

When I was building my Bat Boxes there were many challenges that I had to overcome

6 – This is an example of pesticide being applied to crops

Define This is the first stage in my Design Process. I had to define a problem that we are facing, which was agricultural runoff, from this I researched potential problems while maintaining my target, of the life on land goal.

Ideate With an idea of the target and the problem I could begin planning solutions. Of the many solutions that I had researched bat boxes seemed to be the most appealing and interesting. I eventually choose bat boxes as I can make them easily cheaply and hang them on my grandparent’s farm.

7 – These are the Kent bat boxes that I created

Prototype Once I further researched bat boxes I settled on a Kent style bat box design. This bat box best suits microbats which are the bat that lives in WA and on my grandparent’s farm. I then began to make the measurements and purchase materials. Once I had purchased the materials I began to make my bat boxes.

My Project

I created bat boxes to hang on my grandparent’s farm. By helping the bats and increasing their populations it provides positive effects for my grandparent’s farm. Typically bats can eat 500 mosquitos every hour! Not only this but bats can decrease the number of destructive insects attacking the crop, meaningless pesticide is used to protect crops.

8 – These are 2 bat boxes that I have created

9 – These are the openings for the bats to enter the bat boxes

The outcome

I have not yet been able to hang my bat boxes therefore I have not tested their effectiveness. I predict that the bat boxes will reduce mosquito populations and crop-damaging insects. This will therefore reduce pollution runoff as fewer pesticides are used to remove the crop-damaging insects. The bat boxes will also increase bat populations as they will give bats homes on largely deforested land.

In my opinion, I succeeded with my bat boxes because I achieved what I had set out to which was to create bat boxes, I mightn’t have been able to hang them up however I have many plans and backup plans for where to hang them to ensure that bats can live in them. I can assure you this as my grandparents have seen bats on their farm and not far from their place is another place that actually has bat problems and the owner would be willing to pay money to give bats homes outside of his house.

What would I change?

I would plan ahead next time and take more effort to define the question. I would then be able to find a better more accurate solution that would be easier and quicker to accomplish.

I would also try to work more as a group and have team members next time to make the designing and building process quicker and easier. I would also acquire materials and plan beforehand to also make the designing and building process.

Where to now?

10 – examples of multiple bat boxes

I will hang the bat boxes on my grandparent’s farm and see if they are inhabited. My grandparents then can assess the situation about the bugs and the crop to see if the crop damage on none pesticide crops is noticeably reduced. We will also see if the mosquito populations are reduced just by wandering around common mosquito population areas.

If all goes well I will consider making the bat boxes to be sold around lake grace and therefore make a profit while helping reduce pesticide usage and increasing bat populations.

With thanks to:

Ms Donnelly
Ms Brookland
Thomas
Ayush

Science Engineering Challenge

Innovation & Enterprise, Projects, Uncategorised

We have to build an earthquake-proof spaghetti building with a base of 30x30cm base and a minimum height of 60cm. both the spaghetti and the blue-tack will cost money to use to simulate real-world situations. I am hoping to create a spaghetti building that can withstand being shaken on a shake table for 10 seconds. I hope to achieve this by allowing the tower to move as I have seen jointed towers in real-life examples and I hope to recreate this in my model allowing the tower to move and flex on a stable base. I hope to recreate this by using the flexibility of spaghetti to my advantage by creating a strong stable base then connecting the tower using single strands of spaghetti allowing the tower to wobble and flex. I believe the importance of creating an earthquake-proof spaghetti building is that it shows we can potentially save lives through reduce the risk of earthquakes collapsing buildings and potentially killing people.

This is our second spaghetti tower note the large glob of spaghetti in front of the furthest leg is the pendulum.

The engineering process we took for our first prototype was defining, researching, designing then building. We had many hiccups during this process as we had a group change at the start of the engineering challenge which reduced the time we had to work on our design and prototype. Many of our original designs were quite contradictory and therefore we had many disagreeing conflicts however we eventually settled on a rather complicated but in theory effective design. The design we settled on was based on the jointed earthquake-proof buildings that we largely researched and found the most effective. We then built our tower and gave it a small test, it worked but not very well. We then had to test our building on the shake table and it collapsed largely due to a snapped spaghetti piece and an off-centre tower as the tower was balanced on the base. The outcomes of this tower design led us to design a more simplified tower with triangles, as they are the strongest shape and a pendulum to absorb the motion and increase the effectiveness of the triangular design. Our second earthquake-proof building survived a scale 7.3 magnitude earthquake and I believe this is a good outcome for our spaghetti building and design process. I believe that if we had worked more as a team better during the design process we could have created an even better design more based on the motion absorption of the pendulum. I also think that if we had combined our ideas instead of choosing one we would have better solved the conflicts and made a better tower. I would have also changed the way we collaborated as a few people did more work than others and if we all worked together we would have created a better tower.

This is our tower on the shake table, the pendulum has design flaws that could be solved with further designing however it helps absorb the motion which helps reduce the stress on the tower

The pendulum is clearly visible here along with the tower triangular base and its construction method. Note: the pasta on the side of the pendulum is a late improvement to stop it from sticking to the legs.

I was the major design and builder using my math skills and engineering skills to help majorly design both towers. I had a bit of help during the design process from our team members however I was the major contributor towards the end designs. I was also the major builder as I best knew the designs. Most of our group was involved somewhat during the building process and designing process however some people were lacking with their input into our project. I contributed the most I could to my group however by doing this I believe that some others felt there were not needed and therefore kept their input to a minimum. I could have better helped my group by using teamwork skills to help encourage those who otherwise would not have done alot.

This is our first tower, the triangular design was to help stop the tower from twisting. Note: the base wasn’t secured to the tower deliberately allowing the tower to move and, in theory, absorb motion and therefore be effective.

I believe we achieved what we had set out to and I had lots of fun during the process. Our first tower, based on real-life designs had failed miserably and our group did not contribute as much as they could have however we came up with our second design which was simplistic and very effective. Our second tower incorporated more appropriate real-life examples in a more thought out and simplistic way and because of that, it worked more effectively. I had lots of fun completing this challenge and I believe it improved my designing, teamwork and problem-solving skills.

Robotics Competition

Teamwork & Leadership

3rd Place in Robocup Junoir

The teamwork and Leadership involved

 

During the school holidays, Robocup held robotics competitions for schools across Australia. Competing in the competitions greatly improved my teamwork and leadership skills which I believe are important in our daily lives. In the hours we had to complete the courses (Explained below) my group and I collaborated well to overcome the many challenges that faced us.

The competition consisted of 6 courses, three for each day. In order to complete a course, the robot must follow a line on the tiles and make it to a ‘spill zone’ which is a green section of tiles. Once the robot makes it to the spill zone it must grab the can and push it out of the spill zone then exit and follow the course again. Our LEGO technic robot, which we had worked on for many weeks before the competition, was prepared and ready to complete the courses.

(Video: Our robot completing a successful rescue, note this is a moc of the actual course)

On the first of the courses, it was clear that there was an issue with our robot as it could not sense the can. As a team, we collaborated together and tried many ideas. Finally, I advised an idea for the robot to double-check the can was Infront of it before it deployed its claw.

My team and I after competing in the completion (Left: William, Middle: Senuka, Right: Aiman)

The idea seemed promising, and it is now coded into the robot. There were a lot of other challenges as well, especially to do with sensing the can. l contributed as much as I could towards my team and eventually, we found the fault of the issues and managed to fix them. Overall we worked well together and we each collaborate well as a team and helped other teams who were struggling.

The experience and skills I learned during this competition were invaluable and I enjoyed competing. My team and I were incredibly pleased with 3rd place as it showed all our team’s hard work and the teamwork and leadership involved in making it happen.

328 Words.

Egg Tempera – How to be a Renaissance Artist

Innovation & Enterprise, Projects

What is it?

Renaissance - Wikipedia

This is an example of an egg tempera painting and the renaissance period.

For our art project, we had to draw then paint a picture of still-life using egg tempera. Egg tempera is a type of paint that is commonly used by renaissance artists (further described later). This ‘draw then paint’ process was fun, but it had many different challenges that we needed to overcome. This post will further describe an in-detail description of these processes and challenges.

The Drawing Process

This is my still life drawing, I tried to make the pots the focus of the artwork

We spent many weeks practising ‘drawing with the left side of our brain’ to help us draw still life. We accomplished this by drawing silhouettes upside down. This was very challenging and involved us focusing on our drawing technique. This improved our still life drawing skills in preparation for our painting project.

We drew our still life using a contour type drawing technique (drawing which involves drawing what you see as lines(left)) of  Indian style pottery, flowers, ornaments and figurines.

I found it extremely difficult to get everything to scale and try to fit it inside the drawing. However, I managed to find a way that involved using other objects inside the drawing to help get the scale to write on the object getting drawn. For example, if the pot I had drawn is twice as big as a vase in real life then I would use this to draw the vase smaller and, therefore, into scale with the pot. Eventually making the entire drawing relatively to scale around one object.

This is my prototype colour composition for my painting

I tried to make the pots the focus of the artwork and I believe that my artwork succeeds in this. I made this my goal because I believe the three pots next to each other looked quite nice and It adds attention to the pots and therefore more interest goes into my painting from the viewers. It sort of uses the rule of thirds placing certain areas of the pots on each joint of the rule of thirds. In my colour composition, This is furthermore exaggerated.

 

Egg Tempera

Pigments through the Ages - Egg tempera

This is an example of the pigments we were using

After we completed our still life drawings we had to make and paint with egg tempera. This form of paint is created by using one egg yolk, 1.5 teaspoons of pigment, and 1 teaspoon of water. It uses the emulsion of egg yolk as a binder of liquid and dry pigments to create colour layers.

The steps of making egg tempera:

  • Brake an egg
  • Separate the egg yolk from the majority of the egg white
  • Place the egg yolk on a folded paper towel.
  • Role the egg yolk to a corner of the paper towel, this should remove any extra egg white
  • Poke the skin of the egg yolk and drain out the yolk into a small bowl
  • Add 1 teaspoon of water and 1.5 teaspoons (you can add as much as you like) of pigment
  • Mix the egg tempera until all ingredients are thoroughly mixed
  • The egg tempera is now ready, You can store it in a fridge until it becomes dark browny and smells ripe.

Egg tempera was used in the Renacaisence period by most artist, the most notable Leonardo de Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.

So far I have made 17 egg tempera paints each different colours. I have made so many because the fridge turned off after I made my first batch forcing me to create another. Making egg tempera is quite fun however it does take time and practice. The hardest part we found of making egg tempera was cracking the egg and separating the egg yolk from the egg white.

The Painting Process

We had to prepare our painting boards by sanding them smooth with fine-grit sandpaper. Then we had to print a copy of our line drawing onto clear paper. We then used a projector to draw the design onto our board. After that, we had to mix our pre-prepared egg tempera.

This is my egg tempera painting so far. As seen in the blue pot the egg tempera is a bit unreliable.

We then started to paint our artworks based on our colour composition. Mine is going quite well and I have learnt that you can use the brushes ability to absorb paints to help make the layers more even. I have also found that the egg tempera paint is much like oil paints however it dries much quicker.

Throughout this project, I have learnt and extended my knowledge of problem-solving as the paints and the painting didn’t always go to play. (The purple paints started turning grey and the yellow paint went off).

Thanks for reading

Thank you for reading, I hope you found this very egg-citing. But I really should stop cracking egg jokes!

have you tried making egg tempera or have any comments? Please leave in the comment section below.

Book Survey Reading Results

Projects

In this math task the year 9 cohort had to complete a survey and we were given the results to complete a math assignment. We had to pick a group then choose our topic then sort through all the data and make a set of graphs and statements about the data. This is the end result of that assignment that my group and I have created.

 

What did we do?

We researched the favourite book genres of year 9’s and how much they read. The results will be interesting as we will explore how different things such as gender, books read, etc.. effects how much people read and their favourite book genres. This information could help book writers, book stores and libraries by giving them some suggestion to help them write or sell books which are relevant to the currentLibraries - City of Bayswater population. This might help by decreasing technology usage, which is an important modern issue, of this year level. There has been little research done on this topic and therefore it is important for us to conduct this survey and record the results on infogram for future use.

 

Data Bias and Survey type

I think that the sampling method was a convenience targeted sample. This was because it was targeted to year 9’s at all saints as we were convenient. This introduces bias simply because the year 9’s at All Saints cannot represent all the students at All Saints and all the year nines in the world. Another form of bias is that 29 Bibliophile Approved Gifts Ideas For Book Lovers in 2021 - giftlabAll Saints contains high paying students and parents for high education. This means that this data cannot represent the year 9’s of lower pay and education. The sampling size is would be biased if it represented all the year 9’s in the world or the entire population of the school. This impacts the generalizability of our results as it only really represents the higher end of education and pay and therefore it cannot be used for all year 9’s or students.

 

The data reliability

The reliability of the survey is a tiny tiny tiny bit low. In the survey, it did not give a definition of a book. This means that students might ask: “do audiobooks count as a book?” “What about manga’s/comics?” or “My grandma bought a smartphone with a user manual, does that means my grandma reads more books than me?” Even though the definition of ‘book’ has been a bit confusing in the survey, the survey itself still gives useful information. It could be biased only if the students decided to put in false answers and incorrect information which would hinder the data reliability. This isUnderstanding Research For Clinical Simulation, Part 2: Validity and Reliability | HealthySimulation.com evident as we had a Non-Binary section in our data in the box plot and it had a ridiculously high result (365). This skewed our data and its reliability as it was a false answer (we eventually found this out and deleted the response in our data). Another example would be the book selection itself. Another example of false answers are that people put non-binary as a joke so we had to go through and delete this. as we have stated before some students might wonder what counts as a book, comics, user manuals etc…  this hinders the results as they do not know what to put and therefore they may not have put their true answer meaning that not all the answers are accurately making some of the data unreliable. This makes some of the data bias as it is inaccurate and unreliable. With this being said though much of the data was quite reliable and useful.

 

The Data and Graphs

here is a PowerPoint with all the data and graphs shown above Project book ppt (2)

Our Conclusion

In conclusion, from the ‘favourite book by genre’ data, we have found out that girls and boys have different tastes in different book genres. From ‘amount of book genres read by their genre’, the data shows there is not an absolute favourite book genre read by year 9 students in All Saints’ college year 9. From the ‘amount of book read by different genders’, the result shows that the amount of books read by girl has a higher mean and mode compare to boys (probably because boy plays too much video games).

Dymocks - Careers

 Lastly, in the amount of book read by year 9, the static shows that read 0-9 books per year are the most common option to year 9 students in All Saints College.​ The result of our research can help book writers, sellers and libraries however it only represents high paying, high education students of one particular school meaning that this data cannot be used for the wider population of year 9’s across Australia. However, his data can help libraries, book stores and book writers by allowing them to write and sell books to people and know that they relate to the likings and ‘size’ of the book to help stop and restrict an ever-growing problem of younger generations playing too many video games. Further research can be done in stratified samples of all the low paying-high paying government – private schools and more in order to get a better more accurate result for most of the Year 9s in WA and Australia.

 

Thanks for reading

Thank you for taking the time to read our Math Task please leave your thoughts or comments in the comment section.

Christmas Market reflection

Innovation & Enterprise

In the Christmas market we sold recipe calendar’s. We targeted them at people how liked cooking but instead we attracted impulsive buyers and teachers. We made a profit of 42ish dollars. We ended up selling approximately 17 calendars. We sold the calendars for 5 dollars but changed it eventually to 3 dollars. we were positioned at the back of the common so not a lot of people came to us. We didn’t bring a money box so we had to make our own out of envelopes. Our stall wasn’t very interesting to look at so we might have lost some potential buyers. We had no competition (other people selling recipe calendars) So we sold one calendar every person who was interested.

Eportfiolo Reflection

Uncategorised

I use Youtube, Google, Onenote and Outlook almost every day. Google, Onenote and Outlook are all for school purposes expect on the weekends.

I learnt how impactful words and images can be to people online and how you can change what you say by thinking about it. In my Padlet comment I mentioned that social media has such an effect on our everyday lives. I mentioned this because we do not know much better then to go onto social media or technology when we are bored. This means we are more prone to the bad comments that people say because we spend more time on social media then we ever have before. This was very interesting as I thought that people would not listen to the bad comments and turn off the social media platform.

I also learned that some people will jump off bridges based on what they saw from a video on the internet. I also mentioned in my padlet I also found the influence of social media had on people. This was displayed in the video where the person was going to jump off the bridge but thought about it then did a test with a watermelon and didn’t do it. This shows what people will do to look cool after they see a video. This also displays critical thinking. This is described in Lesson 2.

I do not do a lot of social media activity by interacting with other people by chat but I will take what I say into deeper consideration before I post what I do. I do plan to change my online activity but because I do not interact with other people online I will increase my behavior standards.

My future goal on social media will be to create a group online that shows and tells the dangers of online and the effects it has on people. This goal will help me in the future as more people will become social media aware and therefore less people will be bullied online. It has the potential to help me in the future in case I am bullied online.

Nutmeg

General, Innovation & Enterprise

A few weeks ago on the school holidays we got a Welsh plush coat (furry) Pembroke (short snout) Corgi. for those of you who happen to not know the cutest dog in the universe, there are pictures below and to the right. Nutmeg is her name and she eats and chews almost everything. She is very cute, mischievous, nippy and naughty. Her fluffy coat is a result of a common genetic mutation that makes the fur grow longer. Nutmeg is very skinny under her coat and can run at speeds that people win 100m races with. She is the very playful and will become so fluffy you could make another corgi with her fluff. she likes socks and therefore we think she has no sense of smell. Nutmeg is the cutest dog you will see.                                                                          

Flute

Innovation & Enterprise, Music, Projects

I play a musical instrument called the flute. this instrument (shown below) belongs to the wood wind family. I have just past Grade 1 and I am now entering Grade 2 (certificate shown below). I play and complete my exams at AMEB (Australian Music Examination Board). I past with a B+ and I have started to do some grade two pieces. The flute is a mildly tricky instrument as you have to control you breath and hold the right keys. you blow on the mouth piece (show at the bottom) and you connect that with the body which is connected with the foot. This instrument sounds beautiful when played properly.