Sustainability experiments

Science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics were front and centre at McGuire College when Year 7 students showcased projects based on harnessing energy.

Teacher Lynda Howard said the STEAM Fair on Wednesday was about students using solar, wind, and water in their sustainability experiments.

Thermodynamics: (Above right) Year 7 students
Rowan Farren, James Bucktin and Dylan Stevens
tackle perpetual motion in the Science Technology
Engineer Art and Mathematics Fair project.

Projects were then judged by Deakin University’s STEAM project officer Barry Plant and Goulburn-Murray Water’s Stuart Nield.

Wilmot Rd Primary School Year 6 students had the chance to vote on projects, while parents were invited to check them out after school hours.

Mr Nield was looking for construction quality, whether students understood the concept of what they were doing, and putting it into practice.

‘‘The classrooms were assigned to a task and had to build and explain their project; one classroom tackled perpetual motion, another created solar ovens, another harnessed wind power to lift a weight and one used water to turn plastic turbines and water wheels,’’ Ms Howard said.

Year 7 student Rowan Farren, who tackled the challenge of perpetual motion, said his group used a bicycle wheel and attached water bottles to keep the wheel spinning.

Science: (Right) Rachel Cooper, Brianna Nimla-Or, Olivia Judd,
Angelia Mason,  and Georgina Comloine with their wind powered machine.

"The theory is the water in the bottles will overbalance when it reaches a certain point and it will continue turning,’’ he said.

Ms Howard said it was great to have Year 6 students from Wilmot Rd see the fair as next year some would be taking part in a new STEAM class separate to existing subjects which is part of a curriculum change.

Mr Plant was working closely with secondary teachers about improving student engagement through STEAM.

This kind of hands-on learning, linked to real life is good because students are engaged in problem solving and using their creativity,’’ he said.

Story from today’s Shepparton News - “Sustainability experiments.”

Propaganda disrupts, distorts and delays decisions

Samantha
 Hepburn.

It is saddening to see propaganda being used to disrupt, distort and delay matters already clearly understood by science.

Coal is the villain in the unbalancing the earth’s atmospheric equilibrium, a fact long understood throughout the scientific world and accepted by many of our power brokers.

Many, they are rich, powerful and almost without fail, friends of the fossil-fuel industry, continue to dispute that reality and to enhance corporate profits, appeal through propaganda to the wants and aspirations of people, rather than admit to what science has been telling the world for decades.

A professor of Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University, Samantha Hepburn, has written about this perverse discussion on The Conversation.

He story, headed: “Court challenge will test coal mining’s climate culpability” wonders whether a new legal challenge to the proposed Carmichael coal mine – Australia’s largest – will test in the federal court whether climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions should be taken into account when assessing prospective coal licences in Australia?

CSG advocates simply waiting for lifting of Victorian moratorium

The arrival of coal seam gas production in Victoria appeared a given at a Melbourne conference yesterday.

Nearly 100 people gathered in the Victoria Suites at the Collins St Sofitel Hotel for a Deakin University organized event. “The Promised Land: The Future of Coal Seam Gas in Victoria”.

The conference had an obvious leaning toward the law and its relationship to coal seam gas and was overseen by an associate professor from the university’s School of Law, Samantha Hepburn.

Conference promotional material promised the chance to explore social, environmental and social issues surrounding the idea of coal seam gas (CSG).

An impressive array of nearly 20 speakers, along with questions to a panel of four speakers from seven Deakin law students, gave those who attended much to think about as Victoria edges closer to the lifting of its moratorium on coal seam gas drilling.

Although it is unknown when the moratorium will be lifted, some with intimate knowledge of the political machinations of CSG believe restrictions on the State Government pause on exploration and development associated with the industry will be lifted at next year’s state election.

With few exceptions, there appeared broad acceptance that the moratorium would be lifted and that Victorians would he introduced to coal seam gas.

Lakes Oil executive chairman, Robert Annells, questioned the validity  of views of CSG skeptics arguing that if any serious troubles were to be found, they most certainly would have arisen in Texas in the U.S. sere thousands of wells have been fracked.

Mr Annells pointed to examples that clearly illustrated that many of those things critics attribute to fracking are already a part of nature and not a well has been fracked in Victoria.

He indicated the Lakes Oil was ready to go, just as soon as the moratorium is lifted.

The introduction of CSG would, according to Mr Annells, mean jobs and security for those parts of Victoria in which the projects were undertaken.

However, questioning long term and innate value of CSG the chairman of the Land Management Committee for the National Farmers' Federation, Mr Gerald Leach, said the potential damage to farms because of fracking was “alarming”.

Interestingly, Beyond Zero Emissions has argued that the best place for hydro-carbons, considered by some to be the driving force of the modern developed world, is in the ground.

The group which has extensive and comprehensive plans for seeing an Australia free of carbon dioxide emissions is opposed to the use of gas, conventional otherwise, for any purpose and so is unhappy about any maintenance of or expansion of the CSG industry.

Gas is simply a fossil fuel and any worthwhile effort to mitigate climate change could not it as an energy source.

The CSG industry is an integral part of the “business-as-usual” paradigm and so is in direct conflict with any serious effort directed at climate change abatement.