In my life this week…

I just finished our portfolios. Literally she just left as I am writing this. It went fine. As I have mentioned before we are friends so it is a laid back thing. We do need to make sure that we cover everything.

I have been keeping up with my walks and recently changed my route. Now it is 7.5km and a 200m elevation gain. It has me huffing by the time I get to the top but I rewarded with some great views. There is a housing development going in up there and they have put in a golf course. The other morning I saw a Great Blue Heron in one of the water hazards. It took off before I could get a picture but it reminder me of my mom.

Cleaning…

I have not been cleaning as I have been making a loft bed for Ian. I have got all the wood cut and the two coats of primer on it. Hopefully by next weekend I will have it mostly built. I will still need to build the connecting platforms and stairs. Plus I am going to need a weekend of help getting the other two bed disassembled to the point we can get them out the door and everything put back together and connected.

In our homeschool this week…

This week has been all about finishing up our portfolio items. The most photogenic item for the week was Margaret’s experiment making a solar cell. We started with two sheets of copper. One we heated on the stove for 30 minutes. As you can see it started to glow. I was confident that it wouldn’t melt as I had a decent idea of its melting point but Margaret wasn’t quite sure. We looked up the melting point (1085 C) and used an infrared thermometer to take its temperature. It was at 300C, well below melting. We then put the copper in a cut down pop bottle with salt water. We connected it up to a multimeter and got some amperage in the milliamp range. Adding a light did increase the readings.

Books I’m Reading…

I just finished reading “Castle in the Air’ by Diane Wynne Jones. It is the second in a series which starts with “Howl’s Moving Castle” I first watched the animated movie and liked it immensely. I looked online and found that it was based on a book which I of course had to read. This being the second book did not disappoint. I don’t think it could match the first but there is a third. I highly recommend both the first book and the movie. If you like those the second book is well worth the read.

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