What Happen's on Friday's At Hillwood

Each Friday Miss Morehead comes in and we do the blog. Miss Morehead is Oliver's mom. The blog is called The Hillwood Herald. The blog is when we wright an artical and post them on the blog. After we do the blog, we have art. Our art teacher is Anna. Anna is Rubina's mom. After art we have lunch and we go to the park. When we come back we have study hall and we have a selling test. On Friday's we have thirty mins of study hall instead of 45 because of our science class which is really fun. On our third time we flew our hang gliders. After the day is over at 3:00, we go down stairs and we watch a movie!

Our New Science Teacher!

At Hillwood we have a new science teacher  coming in every Friday to teach us Aerodynamics.

 Our science lady's name is Auritte. Last week we made gliders out of stiro foam!  Last week we had to cancel because their were only 5 students. Her family was born engineers. Auritte owns this program call Celsius and Beyond. Last year another lady from her program came to Hillwood, her name was Mary and she did dissecting! It was very fun but Mary left because she went to study to be a scientist! Even though last year was fun i'm pretty sure this year is going to be fun too!

Girl Power at the Google Science Fair

Yesterday, Google headquarters in Silicon Valley hosted fifteen Google Science Fair finalists. More than 1,000 local attendees plus Google workers attended the event and walked along the exhibit halls.

The top three winners are all girls this year, and here they are:

• Lauren Hodge in the 13-14 age group. Lauren studied the effect of different marinades on the level of potentially harmful carcinogens in grilled chicken.
• Naomi Shah in the 15-16 age group. Naomi endeavored to prove that making changes to indoor environments that improve indoor air quality can reduce people’s reliance on asthma medications.
• Shree Bose in the 17-18 age group. Shree discovered a way to improve ovarian cancer treatment for patients when they have built up a resistance to certain chemotherapy drugs.

According to the judges, the girls were all intellectually curious, tenacious, and determined to use science to solve big problems through simple solutions that the general public can do. Each girl won a scholarship and a fantastic-looking Lego statue. Shree received a $50,000 scholarship, a trip to the Galápagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer and an internship at CERN. Naomi and Lauren each received $25,000 scholarships and internships at Google and Lego. All three get a lifetime digital subscriptions to Scientific American.

You can watch the girls' science fair submission on Google. Also, consider checking out the Google Students blog.

Sources: Google Science Fair, Google daily blog

On the Heels of the Maker's Faire, Google Announces Kid Winners of Its Science Fair

The judges for the Google Science Fair just announced the contest's 15 finalists out of 60 semi-finalists. According to the judges, all of the students’ projects asked interesting questions, many focused on real-world problems and some produced groundbreaking science that challenged current conventions.

There were three categories: 13- to 14-year-olds, 15- to 16-year-olds, and 17- to 18-year-olds. In July, the finalists get to visit Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. to present their projects to the panel of finalist judges, including science luminaries, technology innovators and one Nobel laureate. They are vying for prizes that include $100,000 in scholarship funds, real-life experiences at CERN, Google, LEGO and Scientific American, and a trip to the Galapagos Islands courtesy of National Geographic Expeditions. The event will be streamed live on ourYouTube channel so make sure to tune in.

Here are few videos of two of the finalists, the winged keel and a wind turbine:

The Awesome Rubber Band Car Wins!

Erion, Nikita, and I made a rubber band car. We made it differently from the directions told us to, because we wanted it to behave differently. We also had some ideas about how we might make it better. You can read the basic instructions on the PBS Kids website.

Deviating from the directions worked for us! We beat Jake and Zeke's rubber band powered car in a race. The car was fast and could last, or run, a long. We used putty, duct tape, skewers, faucet washers, CDs, and a rubber band to make the vehicle. The cardboard was 5 by 6 inches long. The rubber band car had a extra pair of wheels and customized wheels.

The following video clip shows a giant rubber band car made for humans to ride. It is from the Makers' Faire in Austin. The two DESIGN SQUAD engineers are not Adam or Judy. Rather, they are hosts from an earlier season of the show.

A Heartbreaker: Teens Struggle to Resist Sugar

 SUGAR, SUGAR, SUGAR, SUGAR, SUGAR.

It's true: Teens are officially "addicted" to sugar -- and that could mean trouble for their hearts as they grow older.

If you think about it, many teens eat for breakfast sugary cereal and syrup waffles. For lunch, they drink soda. Soda is actually the main culprit when it comes to a kid's sugar consumption.

In a study, teens who consume added sugar  -- again, usually found in sweetened beverages -- had a higher risk for heart problems latter in life. This sugar makes up 1/5 of their daily calories. This website NPR will give you more info on haw to keep your teens healthy. You can also go this website by the Harvard School of Medicine to read a list of all the different names for sugar. This list could be helpful when someone is trying to figure out how much sugar is in the ingredients of a drink or food item. 

• Agave nectar
• Brown sugar
• Cane crystals
• Cane sugar
• Corn sweetener
• Corn syrup
• Crystalline fructose
• Dextrose
• Evaporated cane juice
• Fructose
• Fruit juice concentrates
• Glucose
• High-fructose corn syrup
• Honey
• Invert sugar
• Lactose
• Maltose
• Malt syrup
• Molasses
• Raw sugar
• Sucrose
• Sugar
• Syrup 

Here is a video to highlight my story:

Exploritorium Exhibit of "Science in the City" Opens

The Exploratorium is having a new exhibit called Science in the City. The exhibit answers questions about San Francisco like "Why are there so many one-footed pigeons?, Where does sewage go?, Who--or what-coordinates traffic lights?," and more.

You should visit locations in and around San Francisco for explorations of engineering, ecology, optics, waves, geology, architecture, weather and more. If you want more information go to the Exploratorium website. Also, if you looking for something to do on Martin Luther King Day, you may want to consider day camp at the Exploratorium.

The following is our video about this story:

Story and vide by Jay and Erion

Scientists Discover More About Light Science

Scientists would like to learn more about science, so they set up labs in three places: a mountain near Japan, underground on the border of Switzerland, France, and on the side of a mountain near the Arctic Circle according to Scholastic.

These scientists are learning about particles and other science things by, for example, under the mountain near Japan, they built somewhere called a Super-K.

"The Super-K is six-story-high located more than a mile below Mount Ikenoyama. Inside, walls lined with light-sensing detectors surround a pole of water. When a neutrino hits the water, a tiny cone of light. The detectors see the light and send information about the neutrino to computers."

A Big Thank You to Adam and Judy

   

Last Friday, The Hillwood Herald interviewed Adam and Judy. They talked about all the projects they did, such as the moon walk, the hidden alarm, and the newspaper table. All these challenges and more can be found at Sparkfun.org, as well as at PBS DESIGN SQUAD.

Sparkfun, a website that Adam and Judy recommend to us, is basically a website that has all sorts of  hands-on science experiments, from flying ghosts to lillypad class. For those of you who do not know what Lillypad class is, it is a class that is "Just in time for that Halloween costume, SparkFun is offering a LilyPad Basics Workshop!"

This class filled up quickly, but the website's staff decided to open a few more spots. The class takes place on October 21st at 6 PM and is designed with the beginner in mind. We'll explain how to build simple circuits into almost any fabric!"

The picture below is the frount page on the website.  

In the photo to the left, I am building a hidden alarm challenge.

White House Science Fair!

President Obama is having a middle school high school White House Science Fair ! There are robots, solar cars, and rockets!

There are robots that play soccer, Ninth graders building planes, concoctions that could cure cancer, and electric wheelchairs!

At this fair comes Mythbusters! and Bill Nye the Science Guy!

President Obama Wants America to be number one in science and math not the twenty first.

This is part of his speech:

The importance of tapping this potential is why we’re here. It’s why I wanted to host this fair, which culminates this weekend in a science and engineering festival on the National Mall and across the country where more than a million people are expected to participate. 

So we welcome championship sports teams to the White House to celebrate their victories. I've had the Lakers here. I’ve had the Saints here, the Crimson Tide. I thought we ought to do the same thing for the winners of science fair and robotic contests, and math competitions. Because often we don’t give these victories the attention that they deserve. And when you win first place at a science fair, nobody is rushing the field or dumping Gatorade over your head. But in many ways, our future depends on what happens in those contests -- what happens when a young person is engaged in conducting an experiment, or writing a piece of software, or solving a hard math problem, or designing a new gadget.

It’s in these pursuits that talents are discovered and passions are lit, and the future scientists, engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs are born. That's what’s going to help ensure that we succeed in the next century, that we're leading the world in developing the technologies, businesses and industries of the future. 

You can learn more about his speech at White House!

Adam and Judy went to meet some of the winners!

Maryann made a smarter toilet. A toilet that has a gallon bottle filled with water so that there toilet thinks it has more water in it then it actually does.

Daniel made a MiBike a bike that can go in rain or shine. It has a shower curtain over the bike so that the bike has protection against blazing sun and pouring rain!

Lilly made a Sibling Soaker, a dunking booth with out the booth! She put a bunch of balloons in a tube with holes at the end when she hits something the balloons burst and pore out the tube on to the victim!

Questions for Adam and Judy

Next Friday, PBS Kids' DESIGN SQUAD's Judy and Adam will be visiting The Hillwood Herald. As news reporters for the blog, we'll be interviewing them about who they are, what they do, and how they came to create all these challenges for PBS Kids.org. We're also going to be able to show them all the projects we have made with their neat ideas.

Here are some questions that I will ask them:

1. Why did our hidden alarm work with 1 AA battery and none of the others did?
2. What made you two decide to create this show?
3. At any point, did you two either get so frustrated or bored that you gave up on the project?
4. What was the hardest project you two did?
5. How long has this show been running for?

On the Sly: The Hidden Buzzer

Today Alysen and I made a hidden buzzer. We tried it with one battery and it didn't work. Then we tried it with four batteries and a battery holder. At first it worked, but it had a mind of its own and was unpredictable. We decided to hide it a magazine, so that when someone touched it it would go off.

We needed a little help to make it work reliably so Graham made some changes and connected the wire with a paper clip of course -- it worked!

If you want to try the Hidden Alarm Challenge yourself, go to the PBS Kids DESIGN SQUAD web page. You can watch videos of the experiment. Then you can go to this page for instructions and the needed supplies.

As you know, Judy and Adam are coming to talk to us and see our experiments. Here are some questions I'll ask them:

1. Do you practice the experiments before you video tape them?

2. Do you make up the experiments? If not, where do you get the ideas?

3. Where do you make the experiments?

4. What did you want to be when you were little? When did you want to become engineers?

5. Do you ever get frustrated with experiments, or are they all relatively easy for you?

I can't wait to hear wait Adam and Judy talk to us about there experiments!

Albino Alligators — And Happy Birthday, Claude!

Today is Claude's birthday! He is 15 now. He lives in the Academy of Science. Claude is an Albino Alligator, a rare type of alligator, first discovered in 1987.

Today, Claude will get cupcakes made of gator chow. If you visit the Academy of Science from September 8 to 15, you can make a alligator insipered birthday hat, or design a birthday cake for Claude.

Information from: The Academy of Sciences and Crocsite

How Did the Caterpillar Cross the Road?

Have you ever thought about how a caterpillar moves? A science student Tufts University is study asking that question. For him and others, it may help answer bigger questions about movement and robotics.

As NPR explains, one type of caterpillar thrusts its gut with movement forward. That means, the caterpillar "leads with its gut." According to the research student, this movement is "an entirely new mode of animal locomotion. He hopes this might lead to big discoveries in the worlds of robotics and medicine.

You can both listen to a radio broadcast on the caterpillar movement or watch a video at NPR's website.

Ten Dimensions - and How They Work

Many don't know that the dimensions exist beyond the third. To learn about the other dimensions, check out this youtube video. It will be especially compelling if you're interested in physics, parallel dimensions, or anything else of the like.

by Brigette W.

Australia Allows Exports of Uranium to Russia

Australia is the world's third largest uranium producer. Not a long time ago, Australia allowed uranium to be exported to Russia. The problem is that it was only Russia. Australia has refused to sell uranium to India. Australia refused to sell it to India for energy use because the South Asian country has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Russia is lucky to be the country that Australia sells Uranium to. Russia hopes that "agreements on the peaceful use of nuclear energy" will be complete. Also, Australia and Russia both signed up to President Barack Obama's plan to secure all vulnerable nuclear material in four years outlined at two-day summit in Washington earlier this month. This had to involve forty-seven countries.

The Maker's Faire

Have you ever had some totally bizarre idea or creation? Or maybe you wanted to make a Hamburger Car? Well, you probably didn't know that their is a huge convention were people can show off these creations. At the Makers Faire, go watch a giant, mega, troll size version of the Mouse Trap Game.

This weekend at the Sam Mateo County Event Center, May 22 to May 23, Come join all the fun and wackiness that you could handle. There is going to be food and games for all ages. Click here to find out more about it.

My Top Picks

This article is about different kinds of germs on your hand. Researchers in the US have found out there are many different kinds of germs living on our hand. They found out by swabbing on someones key board and match the bacteria of the computer owner.

Even on the most clean person have 150 different kinds of bacteria on our hands. Each person leave different kind of bugs on there daily lives. A team of scientists led by professor Noah Fierer from the University of Colorado in Boulder, US was able to match samples of bacteria in 3 computer keyboard. You can wash your hands, use your your arm when you sneeze, brush your teeth, and take a shower.

By Brandon

I would reduce ,reuse ,and recycle.

When I grow up I will be a video game tester.

My favorite science posts are the The Engineering of Ok Go , Animal Myths Heres the truth , and Pierre's Wetsuit Works.

I like the Golden Gate Bridge because people use their time to make the bridge China town because I can see my grandma , Six Flags because that was the first amusement park I went , and The A and T stadium because that was my first baseball game and it is home of the Giants.

What I like in Hillwood is going to the parks , the field trips , and the field trips.

Hillwood is a good school , they have nice teachers , you can go to the park , the upper class has a computer class , you can play chess , and on Friday after 3:00 you use your electronics.

In 20 years will have cars that can fly , cars that run on solar energy , and have flying shoes.

We can put the lower-grade's picture , they can take pictures , or they can put a story that they wrote.

Thomas Edison: His Biography

Thomas Edison, was born on February 11, 1847. Edison was born in Milan, Ohio. At the age of 12, he was a victim of ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactive disorder. Edison then became a scientist.

In the years of 1863 to 1868 he was a telegrapher. He then invented the light bulb, the first electric vote recorder, motographer,and an automatic telegrapher. One of his inventions, the light bulb, is used in every home today.

To find out more about Tomas Edison, visit this Wikipedia page about Edison or this one about his inventions.

Hippocrates of Cos: The Western Father of Medicine

Each semester (two in total of one school year), the upper graders write a report about a designated topic. During the fall semester, we wrote reports about countries. This time, we are reporting on scientists.

For my semester report, I have chosen Hippocrates of Cos, an ancient Greek Physician. He learned medicine from his father and grandfather, as they were also both somehow connected to those fields of study. Little is known about his childhood but studies show that he had two sons, Thessalus and Draco, along with a son-in-law, Polybus. According to Galen, also a Greek physician, Polybus was Hippocrates' true successor and he also became a physician. It is not know when Hippocrates passes away. Some say 83, some say 90 while others believe he lived to be beyond 100 years old.

All sources and picture from Wikipedia