It’s hard to believe we are in week six already! We have loved having a new cohort of year nine boys join us and are thrilled at their energy and enthusiasm. Soon, they will be working on their main research topic for the term on renewable energy using wind turbines. We hope that your son will let you know just how much energy they created and how they achieved this.

Over the past few weeks, we have had a few field trips to places around Christchurch with our senior students. Mr. Frost and  Mr. Litten took our Year 12 Physics students to the University of Canterbury, where Earnest Rutherford was a student. It is 150 years since his birth and he is considered to be one of New Zealand’s most famous scientists. Our Year 12's went to UC to complete the Physics 2.5 Radioactivity assessment and spent the day learning about Rutherford’s gold foil experiment, using radioactive sources and Geiger counters to investigate the absorption of beta and gamma radiation by biological materials, and having some fun with some of the department’s “toys”.

The bed of nails looks quite scary but we can assure you that no students were harmed in the making of this experiment.

Not long after this, Mr. McKenzie, Mr. Jones, and Mrs. Gray took our Year 13 Biology students on a field trip to The Groynes as part of their Fresh Water Ecology unit. They spent the morning determining whether the Abiotic conditions (temperature, pH, river profile) in the Otukaikino stream had an impact on the number and variation of invertebrates in the stream. The students needed to identify two different types of invertebrates, record the quantity within 15 different sample sites and when back in the classroom, compare and contrast their results with their classmates. What they found was that there was strong evidence of indicator species across all sample sites. Indicator species help tell us the condition of an ecosystem, which in this case was healthy.

We had a wild and dramatic day at Taylor’s Mistake last week with the Year 12 Biology students. Mr. McKenzie, Mr. Jones, Ms. Warburton, Mrs. Lawson, Mrs. Gray and Ms. Turton took almost 50 students out to Taylor’s Mistake and we were greeted with some impressive surf! The students investigated air and water temperature, light intensity, and the availability of water, to see if this had any effect on life in the intertidal zone (low to high tide zone). The three main species the students counted were Tiotio (barnacles), Kuku (blue mussels) and Ngaeti (blue periwinkles snails) but there were a lot of interesting critters, such as Kōtore moana (anemone) and Kākihi (limpets). We shared the site with Prebbleton Primary and several surfers, one surfer came back with a broken board! A stop-off at the Lolly shop on Dyers Road was a treat for a few of the students but the St Bede’s College staff had to be wary of the super sour lollies that were offered out, nice try but we’re on to you ! 

Thank you to all of our students who represented St Bede’s College so beautifully with polite and respectful behavior and a willingness to learn, ka pai!