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sea safety

 

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cyberbullying

 

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Football

 Football

Football is a wonderful sport where the aim of the game is to kick the ball into the other team’s goal. In football, you are only allowed to use your feet unless you are the goalkeeper. 

The ´Foot` in Football

In football, most of the time you can only use your feet. When you use your feet there are only certain things you can do. This means you cant go around kicking people on the other team as it has to be fair.

Defending

In football, if you had to defend against their team you would try and tackle them. There are some safe ways to tackle such as just kicking it through their legs. However, there are also some unsafe ways to tackle like a slide tackle.

The Dangers Of Tackling

As long as you touch the ball most kinds of tackling are legal however sometimes you can’t do certain things. If you were to slide tackle somebody and you touched the ball first the ball would be considered your ball. This would mean that if they fell down you would not be punished because they were trying to tackle you. However, if you hit them before you hit the ball that would be a fowl and you would be punished.

Fowling

If I fowled somebody in football I need to be punished so sometimes I will be given a yellow card. If you are given two yellow cards you are sent off the field and no subs are allowed to replace you. Normally though the other team is awarded a free-kick which means they get a run-up and nobody else can kick it. It gives them the chance to smash the ball as far up the pitch as possible. If it is in the goal area (called a box) then they are awarded a penalty where nobody is allowed in front of them, and they take a shot at the goal with just the keeper in there.

Goalkeeper And Shooting

In football, there are two goals, one on either side, the aim is to get around all of the defenders and shoot at the goal. In the goal, though there is the goalkeeper and he is allowed to use his hands to stop the ball. If he does then he can do what he wants with it but if he doesn’t stop it it’s a goal and you get a point. The goalkeeper’s job is to defend the goal from the ball and in the box, he is allowed to use his hands, however, he is not allowed to pick up the ball outside of the ball.

Teams

In football, you have eleven people per side on the pitch at one time. They can be defenders, strikers, midfielders and a goalkeeper. Your team can go in any pattern as long as they have a goalkeeper. However, they also have lots of subs and reserves that can fill in for anyone.

In football, you can have lots of fun with friends or just play in tournaments to socialise and meet new people. It’s a very inclusive sport and as long as you have legs you can play. You can meet up with people through it and do stuff together afterward but it is a very unique sport that people generally thoroughly enjoy.

By Cormac

deforestation

 

 

What Is Deforestation? Causes, Consequences

What Is Deforestation?

Deforestation refers to the decrease in forest areas across the world that are lost for other uses such as agricultural croplands, urbanization, or mining activities. Greatly accelerated by human activities since around 1960, deforestation has been badly affecting natural ecosystems and the climate. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the annual rate of deforestation to be around 1.3 million km squared per decade.

The Causes of Deforestation: Why Is Deforestation Happening?

Multiple factors, either of human or natural origin, cause deforestation. Natural factors include natural forest fires or parasite-caused diseases which can result in deforestation. Nevertheless, human activities are among the main causes of global deforestation. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the expansion of agriculture caused nearly 80% of global deforestation, with the construction of infrastructures such as roads or dams, together with mining activities and urbanization, making up the remaining causes of deforestation.

 

Agriculture is the Number 1 Cause of Deforestation (80%)

Why is deforestation happening? According to the FAO, agriculture causes around 80% of deforestation. And how does agriculture cause so much deforestation? According to the same report, 33% of agriculture-caused deforestation is a consequence of subsistence agriculture – such as local peasant agriculture in developing countries

 

Commercial or industrial agriculture (field crops and livestock) cause around 40% of forest loss – in the search for space to grow food, fibers, or biofuel. It is also particularly interesting to note livestock is believed to be responsible for about 14% of global deforestation. The main reasons why have to do with the large areas require both to raise livestock but also to grow its soy-based food.

How wolves changed rivers

In 1995 wolves were sent to  Yellowstone National Park after being captured in Canada to try and get some wolves to breed. They just appeared as they traveled. The numbers of deer in the park had risen incredibly fast as there was nothing to hunt them. So the deers grazed and they grazed some more. So most of the vegetation had gone from the park. However, when the wolves came back they started to kill the deer which kept them away from certain places such as the valleys and the gorges.

And so those places immediately started to regenerate. The height of the trees quintupled in just six years. Bare valley sides quickly became forests, and as soon as that happened the birds started moving in. The number of beavers greatly increased because they ate trees. And the beavers were engineers and what they did is they created niches for other creatures. And the dams they built in the rivers provided habitats for otters, ducks, muskrats, fish, reptiles, and amphibians.

The wolves killed coyotes and as a result of that, the number of rabbits and mice began to rise, which meant more hawks, more weasels. More foxes, more badgers. Ravens and bald eagles came down to feed on the wolves' leftovers, and bears fell on it too so their population began to rise, partly too because of the growing number of berries on the regenerating shrubs. And then the bears had enough strength to hunt the deer and reinforce the wolves.

However, the rivers were going into straighter lines staying in place and not eroding as much anymore, More permanent pools formed. The rivers changed because of wolves. The reason was that the regenerating forest stabilized the banks so that they collapsed less often so that the rivers became more fixed in their course. And because of the regenerated vegetation on the valley sides, there was less soil erosion because the vegetation stabilized that as well. However now you can see the chain reaction, every time we chop down a tree animals are driven away.

 

So now you can see what chopping down a tree does to a natural ecosystem. It makes everything unstable. So I believe that if we can avoid chopping down entire forests or doing it in a safer way we can save ecosystems. 

Wildfires

 Wildfires

What Is A Wildfire

Wildfires are any unplanned fires that burn in forests and other wildlands, such as shrub or grass communities. They’re a powerful natural force we must fully understand and respect in order to best help control them. Nearly nine out of ten wildfires nationwide are caused by humans and could have been prevented.

How Wildfires Start

On a hot summer day, when drought conditions peak, something as small as a spark from a train car's wheel striking the track can ignite a raging wildfire. Sometimes, fires occur naturally, ignited by heat from the sun or a lightning strike. However, the majority of wildfires are the result of human carelessness.

­Everything has a temperature at which it will burst into flames. This temperature is called a material's flashpoint. Wood's flashpoint is 572 degrees Fahre­nheit (300 C). When wood is heated to this temperature, it releases hydrocarbon gases that mix with oxygen in the air, combust and create fire.

There are three components needed for ignition and combustion to occur. A fire requires fuel ­to burn, air to supply oxygen, and a heat source to bring the fuel up to ignition temperature. Heat, oxygen, and fuel form the fire triangle. Fire­fighters often talk about the fire triangle when they are trying to put out ablaze. The idea is that if they can take away any one of the pillars of the triangle, they can control and ultimately extinguish the fire.

­After combustion occurs and a fire begins to burn, there are several factors that determine how the fire spreads. These three factors include fuel, weather, and topography. Depending on these factors, a fire can quickly fizzle or turn into a raging blaze that scorches thousands of acres.

Fuel Loads

Wi­ldfires spread based on the type and quantity of fuel that surrounds it. Fuel can include everything from trees, underbrush, and dry grassy fields to homes. The amount of flammable material that surrounds a fire is referred to as the fuel load. Fuel load is measured by the amount of available fuel per unit area, usually tons per acre.

A small fuel load will cause a fire to burn and spread slowly, with low intensity. If there is a lot of fuel, the fire will burn more intensely, causing it to spread faster. The faster it heats the material around it, the faster those materials can ignite. The dryness of the fuel can also affect the behavior of the fire. When the fuel is very dry, it is consumed much faster and creates a fire that is much more difficult to contain.

Weathers Role In wildfires

Weather plays a major role in the birth, growth, and death of a wildfire. Drought leads to extremely favorable conditions for wildfires, and winds aid a wildfire's progress weather can spur the fire to move faster and engulf more land. It can also make the job of fighting the fire even more difficult. There are three weather ingredients that can affect wildfires: Temperature, moisture, and wind.

As mentioned before, temperature affects the sparking of wildfires, because heat is one of the three pillars of the fire triangle. The sticks, trees, and underbrush on the ground receive radiant heat from the sun, which heats and dries potential fuels. Warmer temperatures allow for fuels to ignite and burn faster, adding to the rate at which a wildfire spreads. For this reason, wildfires tend to rage in the afternoon, when temperatures are at their hottest.

Wind probably has the biggest impact on a wildfire's behavior. It also the most unpredictable factor. Winds supply the fire with additional oxygen, further dry potential fuel, and push the fire across the land at a faster rate.

While wind can help the fire to spread, moisture works against the fire. Moisture, in the form of humidity and precipitation, can slow the fire down and reduce its intensity. Potential fuels can be hard to ignite if they have high levels of moisture because the moisture absorbs the fire's heat. When the humidity is low, meaning that there is a low amount of water vapor in the air, wildfires are more likely to start. The higher the humidity, the less likely the fuel is to dry and ignite.

Since moisture can lower the chances of a wildfire igniting, precipitation has a direct impact on fire prevention. When the air becomes saturated with moisture, it releases moisture in the form of rain. Rain and other precipitation raise the amount of moisture in fuels, which suppresses any potential wildfires from breaking out.

Fires On The Mountain

The third big influence on wildfire behavior is the lay of the land or topography. Although it remains virtually unchanged, unlike fuel and weather, topography can either aid or hinder wildfire progression. The most important factor in topography as it relates to wildfire is the slope.

Unlike humans, fires usually travel uphill much faster than downhill. The steeper the slope, the faster the fire travels. Fires travel in the direction of the ambient wind, which usually flows uphill. Additionally, the fire is able to preheat the fuel further up the hill because the smoke and heat are rising in that direction. Conversely, once the fire has reached the top of a hill, it must struggle to come back down because it is not able to preheat the downhill fuel as well as the uphill.

In conclusion, I hope we can all work together in lighting fires in a safe way, as if we don’t there will be millions of dollars every year in damage, which could be going towards schooling or cancer or something important, rather than just using it to repair from mistakes.

 

 

Why Plastic Pollution Is A Global Problem

 Cormac Ryan

Why Plastic Pollution Is A Global Problem

Intro

Plastic is a big problem in the environment, as more disposable plastic has boosted its production all over the world. This overwhelms governments in a rush to defeat plastic. People have become so desperate that they are writing a global treaty negotiated by the United Nations.

Everyday Uses That You Wouldn’t Think About

It’s nearly impossible to go throughout your day without using plastic. Plastic face wash and shampoo bottles, toothbrushes, and makeup containers greet us in the morning. Plastic-lined paper coffee cups fuel our workday and plastic forks, knives, spoons, and plates greet us at lunch. Plastic packaging is tossed in the bin as we unwrap dinner ingredients and plastic helps us scrub our dishes clean when we’re done.

Plastic Life

More than 90% of plastic isn’t recycled and it’s estimated to take anywhere from 500 to 1,000 years for plastic to break down in landfills. If it isn’t recycled or incinerated, this trash often finds its way into streams, rivers, and oceans where animals can’t help but eat plastic, often because it smells like food to them.

Top Plastic Producers

The top producer of plastic is Brazil. It has a population of 209.5 million and roughly each person creates 5280 pounds of plastic a year. Also only eight percent of plastic is recycled. In second place you have the USA with 325 million people. Each person averagely creates 234 pounds of plastic per year. 35% of plastic is recycled.In 3 place comes Germany with 83.2 million  people. Each person roughly generates 101 pounds of plasticper year. However Germany does recycle 64% of plastic. And then in fourth place you have China. With 1.444 Billion people and an average of 91.25 pounds a year each. It also has 1% of recyclable plastic.

How did this happen?

Plastics made from fossil fuels are just over a century old. Production and development of thousands of new plastic products accelerated after World War II, so transforming the modern age that life without plastics would be unrecognizable today. Plastics revolutionized medicine with life-saving devices, made space travel possible, lightened cars and jets—saving fuel and pollution—and saved lives with helmets, incubators, and equipment for clean drinking water.

The conveniences plastics offer, however, led to a throw-away culture that reveals the material’s dark side: today, single-use plastics account for 40 percent of the plastic produced every year. Many of these products, such as plastic bags and food wrappers, have a lifespan of mere minutes to hours, yet they may persist in the environment for hundreds of years.

Conclusion

I believe that the plastic problem needs to be fixed. It is a fast-moving problem and will continue to ruin cities. For people in the future, I believe that we should give them a nice planet.

script

The two characters start sitting across from each other talking about pets.

Mr cheese: I think it would be fair if I got a pet.

Liz: well, it would amazing but you know your parents hate pets.

Mr cheese: but my dad had a pet when he was younger. But he was walking home one day from school and then a dog came out of nowhere and attacked.

Liz: That’s why your dad hates animals what about your mum.

 Mr cheese: She says no because it’s always her responsibility and its always her money we are wasting.

Liz: I have a plan I’m positive it will work because it worked for me. To the warehouse.

Mr cheese: (Yes Sir, Lady, Queen, Capri your highness. I’m happy to just take orders from you.)-sarcasm, jeez.

Liz: Want a dog or not.

Mr cheese: yes fine let’s go.

At the warehouse

Liz: found it

Mr cheese: What is that

Liz: A robot dog. It barks, walks, eats, sleeps, and um goes to the toilet. Plus it only costs $100000

Mr cheese: A bit out of my budget.

Liz: Have you ever thought about how terrible your name is?

Mr cheese: Yes I just think my parents wanted a permanent joke.

Liz: let’s just pester them then.

Mr cheese: sure.

4 hours later

Liz: why do they never listen?

Mr cheese: because I haven’t given them a gift yet.

Liz well then let’s go get one.

In the store.

Liz: let’s go get some ice cream

Mr. Cheese: 20 buckets!

Liz: to the checkout.

Afterward

Liz: how do you feel?

Mr cheese: great I just spent 200 bucks on ice cream!

Liz: right now let’s go give it to your parents

Mr. Cheese: so we can’t eat it all now?

Liz: No!

At home

Mr cheese: Troy I have ice cream for you!

There was a flash of light and lots of empty tubs on the floor

Liz: Wow that was fast.

Mr cheese: ye he does that a lot.

 Mr cheese: Can we get a puppy?

Troy: yes!

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My Alien Money Box

Famous New Zealanders

matariki

matariki maths

unusual maths animation

What Changed Between World War 1 And World War 2

What Changed Between World War 1 And World War 2

The First World War (WWI) was fought from 1914 to 1918 and the           
Second World War (or WWII) was fought from 1939 to 1945. They were the
largest military conflicts in human history. Both wars involved military alliances
between different groups of countries. World War I (a.k.a the First World War,
the Great War, the War To End All Wars) was centered on Europe.
The world warring nations were divided into two groups namely ‘The Central
Powers’ and ‘The Allied Powers’.
The central powers group consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey,
and Bulgaria.
The Allied powers group consisted of France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan,
and (from 1917) the U.S
World War II (a.k.a the Second World War), the opposing alliances are now
referred to as ‘The Axis’ and ‘The Allies’.
The Axis group consisted of Germany, Italy, and Japan.
The Allies group consisted of France, Britain, the U.S., the Soviet Union,
and China.
World War II was especially heinous because of the genocide of Jewish
people perpetrated by the Nazis.
The Cause of WW1

The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria in June 1914.
Militarism, Imperialism, nationalism, and alliance system.
The Cause Of WW2

Political and economic instability in Germany.
The harsh conditions of the Treaty of Versailles Rise of power of Adolf Hitler.
and his alliance with Italy and Japan to oppose the Soviet Union.

Teams

The Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey) and the Allied Powers (France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and(from 1917) the U.S.)

T

Mass Genocide

In WW1 the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) carried out the genocide of Armenians.
In WW2 German Nazis committed genocide against Jews and Romanis,
people with disabilities, Poles, homosexuals, Jehovah's witnesses,
and Afro-Germans.

Methods Of Warfare

In WW1 they fought from lines of trenches and supported by artillery and
machine guns,
infantry assault, tanks, early airplanes, and poisonous gas.
sometimes trenches were named to make soldiers feel more at home.
they had signs made to name them. Mostly static in nature, mobility was minimal.
In WW2 nuclear power and missiles were used, modern concepts of covert
and special operations.
Submarines and tanks were also more heavily used. Encryption codes for secret
communication became more complex. Germany used the Blitzkrieg fighting method.

  Conclusion 

After  WW1The the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires were defeated. Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires ceased to exist. The League of Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict. After world war 2 ended with the total victory of the Allies over Germany and Japan in 1945. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers. The United Nations was established to foster international cooperation and prevent conflicts. Post-War Politics After WW1 Resentment with the onerous terms of the Treaty of Versailles fueled the rise of Adolf Hitler's party in Germany. So in a way, World War I led to World War II. The first Red Scare in the U.S. to fight communism. After WW2 There was a Cold War between the United States and Russia after the end of the Second World War until the collapse of the USSR (1947-1991). The wars in Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Korea were, in a sense, proxy wars between the two nations.

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The Tunnels Of Vietnam

The Underground Villages and tunnels of Vietnam

The tight, cramped tunnels were a crappy place to live, but a brilliant place to
defend. They were used as secret resupply routes and staging areas by
communist insurgents. But for U.S. troops attempting to clear them, they were
a nightmare. It was hundreds of miles of tunnels filled with booby traps and
poisonous animals.

The fighting in Vietnam dated back to the 1940s when corrupt democratic
officials turned the population largely against it. Communist forces preyed
upon this, rallying support from the local population and building a guerrilla
army, recruiting heavily from farming villages. The ruling democratic regime
patrolled mostly on the large roads and through cities because their heavy
vehicles had trouble penetrating the jungles or making it up mountains. By the
time the U.S. deployed troops to directly intervene, regime forces had been
overrun in multiple locations and had a firm foothold across large patches of the
jungle, hills, and villages.

And with the increased size of the tunnel network, new amenities were added.
Kitchens, living quarters, even weapon factories and hospitals were moved
underground. The Viet Cong now had entire underground cities with hidden
entrances. When the infantry came knocking, the tunnels were a defender's
dream.

Each tunnel-digging team typically consisted of 3 men. First, two teams dug
two “dry wells” about 10 meters apart from each other. These “dry wells” were
shafts from the surface down 3 to 5 meters. Once reaching the required
depth, the two teams would dig toward each other underground (and then
downward). In each team, one man dug, another shoveled the earth into
baskets then took them to the dry well where the other team member was
waiting to haul the baskets up to the ground. Each dry well had to be filled
after it had been dug. They used either their hands or old American
shovels stolen from corpses or raided camps.  I can't really say how long
a tunnel took to complete because they had different tunnel lengths on everyone.
However, most digging teams were able to dig about a meter and a half in six
hours.

American soldiers used the term "Black Echo" to describe the conditions within
the tunnels. For the Viet Cong, life in the tunnels was difficult. Air, food, and water
were scarce and the tunnels were infested with ants, venomous centipedes,
snakes, scorpions, spiders, and rodents. Most of the time, soldiers would spend
the day in the tunnels working or resting and come out only at night to scavenge
for supplies, tend their crops, or engage the enemy in battle. Sometimes, during
periods of heavy bombing or American troop movement, they would be forced to
remain underground for many days 

At the time, sickness was rampant among the people living in the tunnels,
especially malaria, which was the second-largest cause of death next to battle
wounds. The sickness was rampant because they were living in cramped spaces
with maybe only a meter or less of their own space. They also only ever made
big meals for everyone in this one village so everyone shared food and water.
Another common cause of death was via their own traps with snakes and live
animals.

Overall the tunnels were a pretty bad place to live and fight in. The tunnels rats
sent down to fight in there often walked away with claustrophobia. North Vietnam
was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea, while South Vietnam
was supported by the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New
Zealand, and the Philippines. The communists eventually lost the war leaving a
big change in the cold war.