Prykrete Boat

Rocket Boy LOVES watching MythBusters, always hanging out for a new episode, but will happily watch old ones over and over.

A few weeks back we watched one of the Alaska specials where they tested a myth about a unsinkable aircraft carrier made out of Pykrete.

Pykrete From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A slab of pykrete Pykrete is made of 14 percent sawdust and 86 percent water by weight. Pykrete is a composite material made of approximately 14 percent sawdust or some other form of wood pulp (such as paper) and 86 percent ice by weight (6 to 1 by weight). Its use was proposed during World War II by Geoffrey Pyke to the British Royal Navy as a candidate material for making a huge, unsinkable aircraft carrier. Pykrete has some interesting properties, notably its relatively slow melting rate (because of low thermal conductivity), and its vastly improved strength and toughness over ice; it is closer in form to concrete. Pykrete is slightly more difficult to form than concrete, as it expands during the freezing process. However, it can be repaired and maintained using seawater. The mixture can be moulded into any shape and frozen, and it will be extremely tough and durable, as long as it is kept at or below freezing. In 2009, the Discovery Channel program MythBusters episode 115 tested the properties of pykrete and the myths behind it. First, the program's hosts, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman compared the mechanical properties of common ice, pykrete and a new material specially created for the show, dubbed "super pykrete", using newspapers instead of woodpulp. Both versions of pykrete indeed proved to be much stronger than the chunk of ice, withstanding hundreds of pounds of weight. The super pykrete was much stronger than the original version. The MythBusters then built a full-size boat out of the super pykrete, naming it Yesterday's News, and subjected it to real-world conditions. Though the boat managed to float and stay intact at speeds of up to 23 miles per hour (37 km/h), it quickly began to spring leaks as the boat slowly melted. After twenty minutes the boat was deteriorating, and the experiment was ended. The boat lasted another ten minutes while being piloted back to shore.

Normally on MythBusters they remind you 'do not try this at home' but when Rocket Boy asked to make a small scale Super Prykrete boat I couldn't see why not.  

As Daddy was home I was more than happy to hand the job off to him to complete with Rocket Boy.  The following photos and explanations are by shared by Rocket Boy. 

Daddy is cutting up newspaper.

I am putting newspaper in water.

We are moulding the wet newspaper into a boat.

In the freezer for the night.

Frozen solid.

Put in the water.

Added Lego figure.

15 minutes later.

The boat lasted 22 minutes. 

A Visit to the Museum

We are currently studying New Zealand which I imagine will take a few weeks if not longer depending on how sidetracked we get.  As Daddy had the week off work I took advantage of this and got to take Rocket Boy out for some one on one at the Waikato Museum, we visited the Ngaa Pou Whenua exhibition.

"Ngaa Pou Whenua is a modern story of the four iwi of Tainui – Waikato, Pare Hauraki, Raukawa and Maniapoto.  From the mouth of the Waikato River, to the plains of Hauraki; the rolling hills of Raukawa and the valleys of Maniapoto.  Ngaa Pou Whenua is an exhibition of Tainui people and Tainui lands, exploring identity and belonging. See the taonga, listen to the waiata, watch the movie and touch the whakairo, nau mai, haere mai."

   

 

 

We also visited the Never a Dull Moment! Hamilton Stories,  Rocket Boy enjoyed all the interactive displays, dressing up in school boy clothes from over a hundred years ago, and he loved finding all the swords and guns on display. 

Never a Dull Moment! Hamilton Stories takes a fresh look at the tales of Hamilton, and proves history exhibitions can move beyond musty stuff in cases.  Visitors will find it quirky, thought-provoking and entertaining. Never a Dull Moment focuses on four themes covering the period from1864-1945, and key events and personalities from those years. But this is no time line.  Imagine portraits that come to life, listening in on town gossip, or settling into a cinema to find out all about Hamilton’s theatre going past?  Perhaps you’d like to spin the settler ‘wheel of fortune’, or take home a recipe from a war time cook book.  (Economy cake, anyone?).

We will probably visit the Museum again after we've finished our study to see if Rocket Boy understands more of what is on display - and to take Ladybug who was a little gutted to have missed out. 

Waitangi Day

Today is Waitangi Day in New Zealand.

On February the 6th 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed.  The Treaty was between the Queen of England - Queen Victoria, and the Maori Chiefs.

It was only signed by some 40 Chiefs on the 6th of February, and many many more signatures were obtained after this.  There were also many Chiefs who did not sign the Treaty.

There is a lot of drama (for the lack of a better word) over the Treaty as there were many different translations and it's likely that those signing it didn't know what they were agreeing to.  But as Rocket Boy is only 6 I kept it really simple, over the years he can learn more.

It's also been a great starting point for our unit study on New Zealand which I imagine will take up a large chuck of the start of this year.

Here's what Rocket Boy wrote about the Treaty.

 

"Treaty of Waitangi They let the Queen become the Master of New Zealand and they agreed they would only sell their land to her. They got to keep their land, and their fishing rights and their forests"

The Boxcar Children

It's just a bunch of children that were running away from their Grandfather, they thought the Grandfather would be bad to him, they didn't know that he was actually a nice rich man. That's basically they ran away from their Grandfather and lived in a Boxcar and then a long time after that they meet their Grandfather and he's a nice loving Man, and that' the end of book one, the end.

I sort of liked it and we're reading the next one.

By Rocket Boy