Newark Air Museum

 Hello, Kez here! 

This is a blog post about my trips to Newark Air Museum. 

The first time I went to the air museum was with the Air Cadets. I had to write a small presentation for the new cadet intake to show the different sorts of activities you can do as a cadet. I will share the presentation I wrote about the trip here: 

The day started with us in our uniform after gathering our things from our Sqns van/mini-bus, we marched through the entrance in a single line to then form up normally outside Hanger 1. We took a tour 'round, while our Civilian Instructor was educating us on the turbine engines and how they improved over the years. We were able to go into aircraft that were not normally accessible to the public and look in the cockpits of the aircraft too! My favourites of the aircraft on display at Newark Air Museum were the Vulcan, the Puma helicopter and the wreck of an Avro Lancaster. I even got to go inside the Puma and nearly knocked myself out getting in! 

 Anyway, back to my more recent visit. This time I went with my friends and I spewed facts that I remembered from my previous trip and took them around in the order I went with the Cadets. 

Whilst Newark Air Museum isn't as large as the bigger, more funded and popular ones, it is still a brilliant day out with loads to offer! 

It's a great day out for nerds like me and my chums! 

That's all for now, bye!! 

Alton towers

For my birthday in May we decided to go to Alton Towers. We walked through the voodoo section which was the first section you get to when you walk in through the gates. We then proceeded to walk through what I think was called Pirate Cove. My father and I went on the Run away Mine Train which went faster then we thought; it went twice and it was super fun! Then we walked through The Haunted Hollows and saw into a fake tombstone and listened to talking headstones. We continued walking through The haunted hollows and we reached a ride called Duel and we went in. At first it was like a haunted house, then we got to the actual ride. We hopped in and we picked up our guns, my dad sat in the carriage behind us, and dual wielded the guns in his carriage, so did I. My mum used one gun and we shot the targets around the ride. Large monsters came down from the ceiling and at that point I shut my eyes and shot randomly.  We got quite a few, but Dad was better and got at least nearly 1k points. We said 'thank you' and exited Duel. We then headed for the log flumes as it was hot. We walked onto the moving platform to hop on the ride, we got in, and we were off! It set off quicker then we were expecting and almost immediately Mum got wet. We trundled down the stream and then there were some rapids; Mum and Dad got wet, but I stayed dry! After that we headed to Hex which told the story of the legend of the towers - we reached the last bit and the room spun. I held on tightly onto Mum and Dad and watched a green potion on the wall, I do not recommend doing that as it seemed to make it more realistic that I was rotating clockwise - that's a lesson I won't have to learn again! Afterwards we headed back to the pirate section - we did some teacups that looked like barrels, I also won a Pokemon Plush. Then we took the little train back to the car park and went home. Oh, i forgot to mention! Dad and I had waffles :]  That's all on our trip to Alton Towers. Bye!!

Cadwell Park

 For my photography we went to Cadwell park to watch the races and practice taking pictures of moving objects. John helped me to understand how my camera functions. I took quite a few good pictures, unfortunately my best one I accidently deleted. I stopped after a while and sat back to enjoy the races. I didn't manage to get a picture of any R.A.F. racers I think, knowing my luck the one I deleted will be a R.A.F. racer 😂. We had a lovely picnic then it got to hot and we got tired after a few hours so we headed home. I'll pop some photos in but other then that, that's pretty much everything. Bye!     

Newton and his home

I went to Woolsthorpe Manor to understand the 3 Laws of Motion and the Universal Law of Gravitation so I can understand how to launch things in to space. I hope this will help me with my NASA project

Isaac Newton lived and grew up at Woolsthorpe Manor. He was born in 1643 and he died in 1723. Because he was born at a time where we changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar he actually has two birthdays.

Isaac Newton discovered that light is made up of a range of different colours using a prism. People in his time thought that it was the prism that created different colours but Newton proved that white light is made up of different colours and that the prism just splits the light into separate colours.

He also invented a mill that allowed his mother to grind her wheat at home.

Newton sat under his apple tree when an apple fell to the ground. This made him ask the question 'Why do things fall down and not up, left or right?' His eventual answer created the Universal Law of Gravitation
He discovered that things fell down due to an invisible force called gravity. Gravity works through forces pulling towards each other. We stay on the surface of our planet because gravity is pulling us towards the centre of the earth. Once we understand this, and how the rotation of the earth plays a part in it, we can start to understand how things stay in orbit around planets.

Newton used to graffiti the walls of his home but not spray-can graffiti like today. It was more like scratching onto the wall. It was not unusual for people at this time to use walls like paper. If you needed fresh paper, you just limewashed and started again. You can still see some of Newton's original workings at Woolsthorpe which was really interesting to see.

Newton also discovered the 3 Laws of Motion:

1. An object will keep moving in the same direction unless a force acts upon it to make it change         direction or speed.
For example, a moving object doesn't stop on its own without something to stop it. Resistance and friction against the object can be many environmental factors like wind resistance or ground resistance.

2. Force = mass x acceleration (F=ma)
    The bigger the mass of an object, the bigger the force needed to move it.
For example. it takes more force to move a double decker bus than a pencil.

3. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
For example: when you are swimming you move forwards by pushing water behind you. It is the water moving backwards that propels you forwards.

At Woolsthorpe there is a Science Discovery Centre dedicated to the discoveries of Newton. It has lots of hands on experiments to do including a holographic apple!

In the centre I did an experiment about pendulums and had a look at whether the length or weight of a pendulum made any difference to the time it took to perform a period (the name for a pendulum completing a full swing from left to right and back again).

We also did several experiments to see how white light is made up of different colours. We used a round disc held a distance away from the white light and, when held at the right distance, it split the colours. This is a replica of an experiment Newton did in his bedroom at Woolsthorpe. Except he cut a round hole in his wooden shutter! The hole is still there today.

When Newton died in 1723 he had a death mask made. You can see this in the Manor.

Interesting facts I learnt:

Not only did Newton discover amazing things he also invented the cat flap!

Newton was mostly home schooled

Newton, when he was in command of the Mint, invented the grooves that are still used around our coins today. He did it to stop people trimming and clipping the coins.

The apple tree Newton sat under is still there today and it still bears fruit. The apples from it are used by the pub in our village. You have to have special permission from Woolsthorpe to be allowed to use their fruit!

Yorvik and the Vikings!

As part of our project on the Vikings we went to Jorvik and it was awesome.

We went to The Dig and we dug up some real animal bones from the Viking times! I also got to touch real fossilised Viking poop! Yorvik has the biggest fossilised poop ever found from this period in history and I got to see it. Apparently when they opened it up for testing, they discovered it was still squidgy in the middle like a Mars bar! From the Viking poop the archaeologists could tell that he ate mostly bread with a little bit of meat and that he was full of worms. He was full of worms because Vikings didn't wash their hands after using the loo. I thought it was icky and gross!

At The Dig we excavated Viking, Roman, Medieval and Victorian pits. These were all the time periods that were found in Yorvik as it was excavated. I found a Victorian toilet and hearth, Roman mosaics and tiling, a Victorian belt buckle, wooden fencing that the Vikings used as a garden path and a medieval skeleton. The skeleton didn't have his feet anymore because when people decided to expand the city they didn't think about what was underneath them. His feet were chopped off to make a new road and the feet bones were stuffed into a big ditch with lots of others. He also had a crushed skull, not from battle but from a big building slab for a building being stuck on top of him and eventually caving it in. Poor Viking!

After the dig we went to The Yorvik Centre and we got to see lots of people who lived in a street called Coppergate. It reconstructs what was found at the Coppergate dig site. It was called Coppergate because it was full of woodworkers who made cups and bowls. Viking Coppergate was brilliant. We got to see what the street was actually like, we got to hear the sounds of the street and the many languages that were spoken there (Old English, Gaelic, Old Norse and Arabic) . And we got to smell Viking England and it was smelly! 

Then we had a talk with some archaeologists and we learnt more about the Viking people. They travelled to France and became the Normans and they went to Turkey, Baghdad, France, and Canada! I was very surprised by this last one!

We were shown finds from some of the digs, including the Hungate dig that my Grum and Grandpa did some digging at. There was a Viking Ice skate I got to touch (they only used one and pushed it along with one foot like a skateboard) , and a Viking fidget spinner! 

Surprising things I learnt at Yorvik:

They had fidget spinners made from small bones off their plate with gristle attached at either end. Children would create a hole in the middle and poke a leather thong through it. Then they would wind it up and let it spin. It would make a high pitched whizzing noise because of the gristle on the end. The aim of the game was to get the piece of gristle to fling off and hit someone in the face! Thousands of these little drilled bones were found in three toilets on Coppergate. The Viking mums must have thrown them all away!

They found 750,000 oyster shells in Coppergate. Three of these have precise little square holes in the middle of them and absolutely no one knows why!

When the children went ice skating, they would take a big stick with them. They would bang the stick on the ice and if it boomed it was safe, if it made a cracking noise then you went round it. A favourite game for children was to see who could get furthest out on the ice. You used to be able to hearing the sticks booming off the ice for miles around. But there was a catch - whoever made it out furthest often ended up swimming back because the ice had been weakened by all the stick thumping!