Thursday, September 29, 2011

General Announcements:

• If you ever notice something missing or wrong on the blog, comment to let me know about it - I don't always have the whole picture. -Grace

Humanities:

• Due Thurs., 9/29: If not completed, finish paragraph about why people were angry after the Revolutionary War.
• Due Fri., 9/30: Start writing rough draft of constitution, based on your "Writing Your Own Constitution" worksheet. Be sure to address all six categories from "Comparing Constitutions" worksheet.
• Due Mon., 10/3: Finish "Notes on Primary Sources" sheet.

Math:

Gr. 8
• Nada
.
Gr. 7
• Quiz Thurs., 9/29: On statistics topics covered so far, including:
  • Measures of Center: Mean, median, mode
  • Range
  • Scatter Plots
  • Stem & Leaf Plots
.
• Recommended Review Problems: In Data About Us, on p. 48 finish #2 (about data on photocopy of p. 47), and #3 (about graph on p. 49)

Science:

• Ничего

Moment of Zen:

Milk Carton Boat Race

From Oddity Central: Every year, at the end of August, Latvians celebrate Milk, Bread and Honey Festival with a special race between boats made from thousands of empty milk cartons.

The milk carton boat regatta has become a very popular tradition since it first took place nine years ago. The wacky event always take place on the Lielupe River, in the Latvian town of Jelgava, and means to offer local audience a good time and popularize a healthy lifestyle through the consumption of organic dairy foods made in Latvia. Teams of locals eager of a good time, as well as some representing dairy processors and food producers enter the competition every year and fight for various titles, including the fastest boat, funniest crew and most original boat.

This year a record number of participants registered milk carton boat race – 36 teams showed up on the Lielupe River, on August 27, to prove their seafaring skills. There were only a few rules teams had to obey for this event: boats had to be made excursively of empty milk cartons and had to be guided to the finish line by human power alone. The size of the boat and number of rowers was not limited, provided the carton vessel remained afloat. The course was only 50 meters long, the shortest so far, but teams struggled to finish as they had to paddle against a strong wind. Some team members even jumped into the river to push their boats across the finish.

Building a milk carton boat is apparently not as easy as it looks, as participants have to take into consideration that each carton can only keep about 800 grams afloat, so if a boat is just a few cartons short it will go down faster than the Titanic. This year the prize for the fastest boat went to the “Small galley”, while the title of funniest crew went to the “Swimming pool”. The 36 teams used around 45,000 empty milk cartons to build their wacky floating creations.