but we're going to be looking at earthquakes today in a little bit more
detail and it to do something really special with the earthquakes I've got an
earthquake machine this machine makes earthquakes my name is Helen Sylvester
I'm head of science at mentone girls grammar it's a prep through 212 school i
teach from you 5 through to year 12 regularly I'm very lucky being science
teacher here at the school because science is one of the focuses of main
focus for the school particularly year 5 you 25 we have a stem year which is the
science technology engineering and math so that means every topic that they will
teach through the year has a science focus which is fantastic now I'm going
to have an earthquake now this is bigger earthquake than what we get in Australia
so I need to make sure your hands are back and it goes like this
it's like an earthquake there was only a little one shall we go bigger so my goal
was to introduce earthquakes in a way that's not on a computer that's the main
thing because too often natural disasters they want to go and do
research on the computer they watch a couple of films but I wanted them to
touch and feel and to see something unique so earthquakes was the primary
focus and I tried to find a different way around that and that focus was
looking at the density and liquefaction of soil how the soil changes during an
earthquake so that the liquid comes to the surface and that causes things to
sink or to float what's happened to my house it's sick why did it sink can you
use the density that we've just learned about to explain why it sank is it more
dense or less dense than the soil more dense than the soil because the water
came to the top the water became the soil became less dense look at the water
here there's quite a bit of water I'm very lucky in a way my earthquake
machine was fantastic my earthquake machine was made by a parent who is an
engineer so I have to say thank you to him and when they made it and brought it
in we were looking at it and she said oh by the way have you seen this and showed
me how an object came to the surface during the earthquake thinking about it
in that way was a light bulb moment because all of a sudden density came
into it and that's what then that light bulb made me look further into the
density and could I actually get the girls to understand density so coming up
with different ways of looking at it coming up with being a way of being able
to use the maths and the biggest problem was working at the volume which is where
Archimedes came in so therefore I had to introduce Archimedes that they could
work out volume of irregular shapes and so it ended up being this nice lesson
that flowed covering Archimedes principle density tying them together
using the maths which is the reason why i love the lesson so much what happened
to the ball when we put it in the water it floated what's going to happen to
this that's lighter hey listen it's going to sink do you agree with her yeah
yeah what do you ask for okay get that slider than this one it's lighter it's
smaller than that and yet it's still sank the surface area of that ball is
larger than that one so it puts less pressure on the water than that one
which is has the surface it actually does have to do with that but it also
has to do with what's on the inside as well and that's what we're going to talk
about we're going to talk about what's on the inside the number of particles on
the inside today one of the things I love working with is the primary school
teachers because me being able to teach something like density which I normally
teach it a much higher year level being able to break it down to those base
concepts that someone much younger can understand helps my understanding and so
I've learned so much from teaching junior school students in the way things
need to be broken down into vary based concepts is really good you don't need
the complex language you can use the simple language to give them the concept
that later on they will use the complex language to explain how much space does
this car take up it's actually really hard to work out and there's a little
trick to it I'm very passionate believer in supporting the primary teachers when
they starting to teach science it's something that I feel very strongly
about and that's one of the reasons why I go to the Junior School as often as I
can just so that often they don't see where science can fit in because they
don't necessarily have the science background so some do some have done
full on science training but others are just very cautious and that makes them
hold back a little bit so I'm a big believer and to that collaboration to
make science the most important thing it's what I'm passionate about so I want
to share that passion