Mobile phone collection in January 2016

Dear parents/students

In Spain more than 52,000,000 mobile phone lines exist today, for just over 46 million inhabitants. This impressive number of terminals must be added those older phones that are replaced and that citizens have kept or thrown away, with the recycling rate of less than 5%. If we multiply these numbers to the countries of the "developed world ", the figures are staggering. At the same time, the exploitation of Coltan, a valuable mineral from which the technology of our phones, computers and consoles are made of, is at the center of the conflicts that produce hundreds of thousands of victims and refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Illegal mining uses slavery work also destroying the habitats of many species such as chimpanzees and gorillas in true danger due to poaching and deforestation.

For this reason, if we recycle our old mobile phones, less Coltan will need to be mined and fewer forests will have to be destroyed, therefore we will be able to reduce the rate of deforestation and protect the habitat of many species in danger.

As part of the school’s consistent approach to minimise its environmental impact, it has been decided to support the Jane Goodall Institute in their campaign to recycle mobile phones.

The school will be contributing to this campaign by hosting a collection of used mobile phones that you might not need anymore. Chances are that you have at least one old mobile phone somewhere around the house, so this is the perfect opportunity to finally get rid of it! The collection will begin on January 11th and will last for a week. Students will come to your classes in the morning to collect your old mobiles.

We just need the mobile phone with the battery,

NO charger, NO SIM card!

By participating in this, the school will enter a raffle with the chance to win the adoption of a chimpanzee. If you’d like to learn more about the institute check out their website:


http://www.janegoodall.org/

We would truly appreciate your collaboration and please feel free to contact us if you have any doubts!





January 11th to 15th 2016


for more information look at http://www.mobilerecyclingday.org/

Bojos per la…../Crazy about……?

Who is bojos/crazy and what are they crazy/bojos about?

The answer is that Adriana C. (does she seem familiar) and Isabel L. (and her too) have both been accepted onto a bojos course. So what is it about?

Isabel L.  has been accepted onto the Bojos per la Natura program. It takes place two Saturdays a month from February to November 2016. There is both fieldwork and visits to laboratories and research centres throughout Catalunya. Some activities include marine biology, paleontology and going to the Delta del Ebro. The activities are directed by researchers working in the ICTA (Institut de Ciencia i Tecnologia Ambientals) which is in the UAB. For more information follow this link: http://ictaweb.uab.cat/natura.php

Adriana C. will be doing the Crazy About Biomedicine program

It's a year-long program directed to students in the first year of baccalaureate and it takes place in the labs at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine of Barcelona (IRB). The course combines practical and theoretical lessons to cover 12 hot topics in the area of biomedicine, ranging from rational drug design to the study of novel cancer treatments, and allows students to get a taste of what it's like to investigate in an international research institute such as the IRB. 

For more information on this look at: http://www.irbbarcelona.org/en/events/crazy-about-biomedicine-2016

Well done to the both of them again! These ladies will go far in the world of Science!

How wolves changed the course of a river and more....

This is a video recommended by Erik S. in Bachillerato. Well worth watching and a great introduction into the workings of food webs and how a change in one part can affect the other parts (and sometimes in a most peculiar way!).

Thanks Erik!

Bottoms up on this wastewater transformed into drinking water! Would you drink it?

This is a tweet from the National Geographic Channel about reusing waste water for drinking water. Would you want to drink this? Then again do you know what you drink normally anyway.

This was supplied by a parent of the school (who shall remain nameless unless she wishes to reveal her identity) who had read the post on the formation of the environmental committee here in Oak House.

More please!!

Enjoy this video

Oak House School Environmental Committee

Oak House School Environmental Committee

We have 7.3 billion people currently living on our planet and that is due to increase to 9 billion by 2050. To feed and entertain this number, non-renewable resources are running out and renewable ones are being used unsustainably. Carbon emissions continue to rise, leading to greenhouse effect, global warming and climate change.

We must do something to slow and stop these changes that we are making to our planet otherwise we and our children will pay the price.

So what can we do? Well it can start with this:

We are currently looking for students and teachers who wish to form an Environmental Committee.

The roles of this environmental committee will be many, including:

·         Environmental assessment of the school and its environs.

·         Development of an environmental action plan.

·         Involvement in projects deriving from this action plan.

·         Transmitting the findings and the work of the committee to the students and wider public.

Who should join this committee?

If you are someone who is interested by the environment and what we are doing to it.

If you are concerned about the nature of consumerism and its negative effects.

If you like the applications of Science.

If you are planning to study IGCSE Environmental Management or IB Environmental Systems.

If you are thinking about a career in the area of environmental sciences.

What should you do?

Contact your tutor.

Contact your Science teacher.

Send a mail to r.troy@oakhouseschool.com

When by?

We need to know who is interested by Friday October 30^th

First meeting: Wednesday October 4^th @ 11am!

“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors: we borrow it from our children.”

Why is the ground so white and bright?

With the addition of the new Bachillerato/IB building has come a new colour scheme for the walkways outside the laboratories and going down to the main gate. They say it is in keeping with the colour scheme of the new building, but is there a more environmental reason at play?

Students have said that the surface is too bright and they find it difficult to see. Students and teachers using these walkways have to squint on very sunny days making us all look a little more stressed than we would normally look.

So how is this surface having an environmental impact?

The fact that the surface is reflecting the light (hence very bright) it means that not as much light is being absorbed and converted to heat. The surface is therefore cooler meaning the air above is also cooler. This reflected light should hopefully head off into space and not affect the planet again. The previous surface was red in colour and used to absorb a lot of sunlight energy converting it to heat. This heat would be radiated as infra-red (IR) radiation that would heat the air making it warmer outside the labs. More importantly, this heat would also be trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and increase greenhouse effect and global warming which is a very serious problem we are currently facing. So is Oak House reducing global warming by painting its walkways a very light colour?

A test of the difference in the temperature of the surfaces is to check the light surface and red steps outside the labs. Come and feel the difference yourself to see!

IB Environmental Systems: Biotic components of an ecosystem

This week saw the students of IB Environmental Systems surveying the biotic components that make up an ecosystem. (Biotic refers to the living part of an ecosystem like plants, animals and microbes).

The students started this part of their studies by learning to identify organisms using dichotomous keys. They also created their own keys for animals found in the Collserola and plants from around the school (thanks to Nicanor).

Even though these students would have used identification keys in both primary and in ESO, they found it tricky to be able to create their own. To be able to look for features of an organism that can be used to distinguish it from another is a skill that needs practice to perfect.

Still, this is just some of the skills that the IB gives and expects from these students. Onwards and upwards!

IB Environmental students sampling the environment

This week the students of IB Environmental Systems and Societies were outside measuring various abiotic factors around the environment of the school. Abiotic factors are the non-living components of a habitat and affect the biotic (living) components. Abiotic factors that they were beginning to measure were light intensity and the temperature of both soil and water. 

This activity was also significant in that the students were learning how to use the new data loggers and sensors that the Science department had purchased this year in order to meet the requirements of the IB science subjects. These data loggers with the addition of numerous sensors and probes can be used in all of the Science subjects both inside and outside of the lab. We plan to also make use of them in both ESO and primary Science to get the students used to collecting data by this means.

When all the data is collected, students then have the choice of viewing it as a table or a graph and then sending it to a computer via wifi to be saved and analysed at a later date. Exciting times!

Contaminating Trees

The predominance of certain trees in a street can raise the concentration of ozone in the air. The presence of ozone at ground level can lead to various diseases in humans such as asthma, bronchitis, and other breathing problems.Trees emit volatile organic compounds (VOC), these substances under the presence of solar radiation react with nitogen oxides given out by the smoke of the traffic to form ozone.

   

    Chimneys and cars emit VOC as a byproduct of the burning of fossil fuels; trees emit VOC, for other reasons, to repel harmful insects and to attract pollinators. Poplars, oaks, willows and tupelo are species which emit the greatest amounts of VOC into the atmosphere.

Barcelona showing the tree-lined (London Plane) Ramblas. 

Are these trees causing more harm than good in an already polluted city?

    But people don't have to worry as for this to happen, many conditions have to be present at once: sun and a warm atmosphere. Cold and cloudy cities have less reasons to worry. But climate change and global warming could all of this to change.

    So, does this mean that we have to cut down all of the trees that emit large amounts of VOC? No, if the city is well arranged and the trees are regularly spaced out there is no problem of having them in a city, but organisations that plan to plant trees as a way to decrease the levels of CO2 should be really careful when choosing the species to plant as they could harm their environment without even knowing it.

    Of course there is another way to prevent this. If we could decrease the emissions of traffic VOC we wouldn't need to be worries about the trees as they will have nothing to react with.

This was written by Pablo Raventós Surroca 

3rd ESO Combined Science

America’s East Coast on the Sights of Wave of Destruction

The canary islands are great for going on holiday. What most tourists and inhabitants don’t know, however, is that on one of the Canary Islands lies a major global catastrophe, a natural disaster so big it could flatten the Atlantic coastlines of North Africa, United States, Britain and Europe and cause enormous harm to all the sforementioned.

Scattered across the worlds oceans are a handful of rare geological and natural time-bombs, that, once the time runs out, will create an uncommon phenomenon, an enormous tidal wave called Mega Tsunami.

Lately, scientists have known that the next Mega Tsunami will probably originate from one of the Canary Islands, where the wall of water  will move across the  Atlantic ocean at the speed of a jet airliner ready to destroy the east coast of the United States, the Caribbean and Brazil.

The cause?

One fraction of the “Cumbre Vieja” volcano on “La Palma” is unstable and could be engulfed by the sea after cracking and dividing from the fire mountain due to the next volcanic eruption.

Dr. Day said in an interview with the BBC: "

If the volcano collapsed in one block of almost 20 cubic kilometers of rock, weighing 500 billion tonnes - twice the size of the Isle of Wight -. It would fall into water almost 4 miles deep and create an undersea wave 2000 feet tall. Within five minutes of the landslide, a dome of water about a mile high would form and then collapse, before the Mega Tsunami would fan out in every direction, travelling at speeds of up to 500 mph. a 330ft wave would strike the western Sahara in less than an hour. "

Europe would be shielded from the savage force thanks to its remote position, the Iberian penisula would get batteres with 33 ft. waves  reaching La Coruña and Lisbon within 3 hours. 

This was written by Erik Sörensen of 3rd ESO Combined Science

The Antarctic glacier melt is unstoppable

Scientists have been researching into Earth’s Global Warming for a long time. They say that the ice collapse could raise all the Earth's sea levels by more than 4 meters. This means that cities like Barcelona could disappear if this continues; however, they now say it’s unstoppable! Scientists says they are on an irreversible path to melting and that it’s impossible to stop it.

On May 16, Ian Joughin of the University of Washington in Seattle, who used simulations to show  the Thwaites and Haynes Glaciers in the same region, said that they may melt  in the next 200 to 900 years. Once this started, the glaciers could raise sea levels by 0.6 meters and start the melt of the rest of the continent’s ice sheet, which could add another 3 to 4 meters to the world's oceans.

This was written by a students of 3rd ESO Combined Science

Global Forest Watch

We probably all know that world’s forests are under a serious threat. And most of us probably intuit that something should be done about it. But do we know why, when or where this is happening? Do we even know who exactly is responsible for all of this? Did any of you know that the world lost 500 million acres of forest between 2000 and 2012?

Sometimes, we don’t know the answers to these questions not because we aren’t interested, but because we lack a reliable source. However, this has now changed with the creation of Global Forest Watch, a mapping application that monitors forests around the world on a monthly basis. The information provided by it is current and trustworthy. It’s got an extraordinary amount of data, including protected areas, logging, mining, deforestation, oil palm, intact forest landscapes, biodiversity hotspots and a lot more.

Another feature of the website is the option to view data for a specific selected area (icon on the left), which can be extremely useful if you are doing an environmental study on the place, for example. What’s more, you can even set up alerts to receive an email when there are signs of deforestation in a specific region.

All in all, this is a great website, full of fascinating information and that is worth visiting. I hope that all of you who decide to give it a look enjoy it!   

Check it out here!!!

This article was written for the blog by Adriana Cavanaugh from 3rd ESO. 

Watch out for this name in the world of Science!

Family Day 2014 in the Science labs

To Oak House School family day 2014!!!

Have you been to the Science labs yet?

Look at the Torre and look right and there we are! Come and see us!

In Drosophila, on the right, we have work that has been presented by our 1st and 2nd ESO students, both in their Science classes and their enrichment afternoons. Also lots of cool experiments for you to try, even the Van der Graaf (shocking!)

In Gaudí, in the middle, we have robots, models, bridges and bizarre applications of physics. This is work presented by 2nd ESO and 4th ESO technology and 4th ESO Physics students.

On the right we have Marie Curie. Outside, where it's hopefully shady, you will find the poster presentations for the first ever Oak House School Science Fair. Have a look, decide the winner and learn some cool Science. Inside you will discover lots of things to interact with and to learn from. Also there will be demonstration experiments every half an hour as follows:

Time	Demonstration
10:30	Exploding bubbles
11:00	Electrostatics
12:00	Burning Money
12:30	Flour bomb
13:00	Volcano

Come and see us, have a chat and see some Science!!

Have the Americans finally realised what they are doing?

I happened across this link and when I opened it I first thought

as a teacher: "This will be great for my Environmental Management class and next year's IB ESS".
then as a person: "Wow, the Americans do know what they are doing after all and still doing nothing about it!"
then as a Dad: "Boy, what sort of a mess have we left for my kids to deal with?"

This website is very slick and represents the evidence for global warming and climate change very well. I challenge any climate sceptic to read this and not be swayed. But reading it leaves me with a sense of despair, what can we do to change this?

I listen to lots of different podcasts on this issue. Some are saying we can do nothing while others are saying we must leave all of our fossil fuels in the ground unburned and write off their value (that'll be a fun debate!). Whatever the solution we have a mammoth task ahead of us!!

Is El Niño coming back?

Idly looking at things on my phone I happened across this image...

so what does it show you? Well you would think that red represents hot water and the blue cold and in a way you are right. What this imaging satellite is able to do is measure the height of the water. Why is it higher you ask? Well because it is hot and has expanded. So yes, red does mean hot (or warmer than it should be at least).
So why is this a problem? Well the warm water shouldn't be going East across the Pacific (that's left for non-compass readers) but West. That warm water will bring rain and flooding to normally desert area and take the rain from places that expect it leaving drought. The warm water will also sit on top of the cold ocean up well off the coast of Peru thus starving the Plankton of vital nutrients and dissolved gases. So that's bye bye plankton, bye bye fishies who eat plankton and by bye fishing industry that supports about 15% of Peru's economy.
But this happens every so often and the Peruvians are used to it so why did this image have such an effect? Well, the image on the left shows the start of the 97-98 El Niño event that changed the phenomenon from a local pain into a global buzz word for changing climate. (I even remember the effects of it in Ireland!) And the image on the right is this year......doesn't it look kinda worse?
Now maybe it won't develop into anything, or maybe it will. What could be making it worse/hotter? I'll let you answer that one!
Watch this space!!

For more on this article go here. Follow these guys, they release some cool stuff!

The effects of pollution

Check out this amazing video showing the impact of plastics (and other rubbish) on bird life on the island of Midway in the Pacific. Moving stuff!! See it here!!!

This was recommended by one of my Environmental management students Ana Habash.

Is it time for the electric car?

I received a link from one of my students (thanks Bruno) about the plan to introduce electric cars into a Chinese city in order to tackle the awful air pollution they have there.

To read the full article (in Spanish) go here!!

So is it time for other cities to do the same? In China it is Shanghai that are leading this initiative with electric cars being made very much affordable compared to their pollution causing counterparts.....but what about Barcelona for example, we have an air pollution issue here too due to the large volume of traffic (though not on the same scale as Chinese cities). Now the infrastructure is being put into place with charging points throughout the city but what about beyond? Will we now have battery changing stations in place of the common petrol station? And what about battery technology....at the moment the battery takes up most of the mass of the car and they can only get you a limited distance before they need to be fully re-charged....

You'll notice I'm asking a lot of questions whilst giving no real answers but this is the debate that is currently raging over the future of transport and the dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, particularly petroleum...What's you position? Read more and find out for yourself!

The Last Mile.....! (1.6 kilometers in metric)

Listening to the latest "Naked Scientist" podcast (whilst doing the washing up....yay for podcasts) 

the last mile was mentioned.

Now what is this you ask? Is it a sequel to the Green Mile? No, it is all to do with the carbon footprint involved in the transportation of food.

Now we know that the carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide produced in the process of doing something, well where is it the highest in the transportation of food?

 Is it the tractor or other farm machinery involved in the production of  the food?

Or the great huge trucks that seem to be taking over our roads and parking in the most awkward of places. 

I thought this was the biggest culprit, but I was wrong, because it is.......

The family car!! Now how many of us drive to the supermarket to get our weekly groceries or just a few things that we are missing? Well it turns out that this is the most inefficient and heavy carbon producing part of the chain. Hence the idea of the last mile. A typical car is 1.5 tons with a capacity for a 40kg cargo where most of the energy goes into moving the car. Trucks on the other hand are far more efficient, using most of their energy in moving the cargo. 

So where does that leave us? How do we get our groceries in a greener way?

Solution.....home delivery!

A big van carrying groceries for a large number of people, far more efficient (and less stress full too).

Another solution of course is that you can live in the centre of Barcelona and are surrounded by supermarkets all within walking distance. And off you can go with your shopping trolley; tiny carbon footprint and a bit of exercise.

And don't forget to try and buy local produce.....for freshness, reduced carbon footprint and to support the local economy!

And now your challenge is this, how will you try and include the phrase "The last mile" into your conversations today?

What is the relationship between whale faeces and 9/11?

And well you might ask that!

Yesterday, whilst listening to a podcast, they were talking about how noise from offshore wind turbines and shipping might be affecting sea-life like whales and fish. Research is showing that more and more sea creatures (if not all of them) use sound to communicate and our noise pollution is probably affecting this.

But how do you show that?

It has been shown that noise pollution has an adverse affect on humans and terrestrial animals alike but how can you show it in sea creatures?

Well when 9/11 occurred, as well as air traffic being reduced, shipping traffic was also reduced. Scientists analysing whale faeces (where would they find this stuff?) which they were doing anyway, found that levels of stress factors present were greatly reduced. i.e. whales were less stressed when shipping (and its noise) were reduced!!

This is why I love Science!! It's a shame that something like 9/11 had to happen to be able to show this. And are we reducing shipping because of it.....?

CMC - La Crisis Del Pepino

EL COGOMBRE ESPANYOL NO VA SER EL CULPABLE

Recordareu que fa 2 anys i mig  la ministra de salut d´ Hamburg va acusar el cogombre espanyol de provocar un brot d’ E. coli. http://elpais.com/diario/2011/06/01/sociedad/1306879202_850215.html

Aquest fet va tenir conseqüències econòmiques molt greus pels agricultors del nostre país.

Els alumnes de CMC han preparat una campanya publicitària que s’hagués pogut utilitzar, estic segura que amb molt d’èxit, per netejar la mala imatge que es va generar  després d’aquest incident.

 Aquí tenim dos exemples de materials proposats per la campanya: