Sydney Olympics

Some of the things we know about the Olympics:

1. The names of the Sydney Games mascots are Olly, Millie and Syd.
Millie is for Millenium.  Millie is an echidna.
Olly is for the Olynmpic Games.  Olly is a kookaburra.
Syd is for Sydney.  Syd is a platypus.
2. The torch will go through fourteen different countries.
3. The Games will be held at Homebush Bay in Sydney.  Sydney is the capital of New South Wales where the first white people settled in Australia.
4. The Games are held each leap year in September.
5. The first games were held in Olympia – a place in Ancient Greece.
6. In ancient Greece some athletes competed in armour.
7. When the games first started only men were allowed to play or watch.  If a woman was found watching she was sentenced to death.
8. The Sydney Games torch can stay alight in 60kph winds and it burns for twenty minutes using natural gas.
9. The Olympic Flag is white and has five overlapping coloured circles of blue, yellow, black and red.  Every flag in the world has at least one of these colours in it.
10. Nearly all the countries in the world send a team to the Games.
11. The modern games are very different from the ancient.
12. One legend of how the games started was when a strong man called Heracles used his strength in bad ways.  The gods punished him by giving him twelve jobs.  One job was to clean out the king’s stables. Heracles pushed two rivers together to was out the stables.  He then decided to make up some games to test men’s strength and speed.
13. The symbol for the Sydney Games is an athlete with legs and arms shaped like boomerangs.  The Sydney Opera House and the torch are also in the design.
14. The Olympic Games motto is Altius, Litius, Portius.  Which is Latin for Higher, Stronger, Faster.

Balloon Cars

We made these balloon cars. They had to travel two metres in a straight line. Some didn't! Some cars went in circles! The design brief was to make a vehicle powered only by a balloon. It had to be made from junk and must not have any parts of a shop-made toy car in its construction.  For answer, see the end of Room 10's web page.

	Which car was disqualified. Why was it disqualified? Can you pick which car travelled the furthest?

We had to build a self-standing tower from many kinds of maths materials. We then had to write about our tower. We had to say how we could make it more stable and how we could improve the design to make the tower higher.

		Which tower do you think took the longest to build? Why? Which tower do you think is the most stable? Why?
		Which Tower would fall over the easiest? Why?

Insect Art
We had to copy a picture of an insect onto a piece of paper which had a grid drawn on it. We had try to make our picture as accurate as possible.
 
 

Which car travelled the furthest?
The one with the green balloon!