In Technology this term, the Tall Poppies have had two groups exploring land yachts and rockets - creating or launching our own designs, then innovating on our discoveries to make them perform better. So we were extremely fortunate to then have Garth Cumming bring in his real life examples of innovation on exactly the same topics!

Rockets

Garth asked us to bring in 1.5 litre plastic bottles, H2Go bottles and similar, so they could become rockets. The ‘rockets’ were then filled with water and launched out of an old artillery shell. The shell was quite large.

At home, Garth, with his sons Luke and Regan, had drilled a hole in the bottom of the shell so that he could then run an air compression hose through it. Out on the back field at school, he then put an attachment onto the hose so he could connect it to the half-filled plastic bottles. The way it worked was he would fill the bottle with compressed air. A bottle builds up pressure and needs somewhere to go, so it would explode up and out of the artillery. After checking how safe it was, some of the Tall Poppies tried to catch the ‘rockets’ (aka bottles) as they came back down. Later, the Tall Poppies also started experimenting with what would happen if we filled the bottles all the way full, half full or quarter full. The results showed that the bottle filled quarter full worked best because it has more space to build up air pressure.

Blokarts

We found out blow karts were invented in Papamoa by a company now called Blokart International. The company started as a very small company innovating on the idea of land yachts and land sailing. Now the company is a very big company and sends their karts all over the world. Garth brought in his blokart. The Tall Poppies organised ourselves into groups of 3 and we worked together to build the blow kart with Garth’s guidance. We built the base, the sail, then put them together. There was not enough wind on the day for us to drive the blow kart on the back field, so we came up with the idea for two Tall Poppies to push the cart, acting as ‘wind’, while a third Tall Poppy sat in it and steered.

Here’s what some of the Tall Poppies said about our Technology session:

It was fun because you got to ride in the land yacht and shoot and catch the rockets. - Casey Beach (Year 8)

It was fun and I got to shoot a rocket. - Tristan Cronje (Year 8)

I liked how we got to have a turn in the land yacht. - Hannah Rawson (Year 7)

I liked watching the rockets shoot up, and with the blow cart I liked pushing the people around. - Joshua Crisp (Year 7)

I liked learning how much air and water to put in the bottle. I liked driving the blow cart and I'm glad I got more than one turn. - Zeerak Riaz (Year 8)

It was really fun driving the blokart and shooting the rockets. It was the best technology session ever! - Libby Morell (Year 7)

I like driving the blokart it was really exciting - Ava Parish (Year 8)

Personally, we enjoyed it because they were real life things instead of building small models in class. A big thank you to Garth Cumming for coming in, sharing and teaching us more about rockets and blokarts.