. : Le Shepherd Education Centre: .

Geeky Gyrating Gears

radicaldreamer07 — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0800

School’s out and you just need something fun to do (besides those piling holiday homework!) Hanging out aimlessly is just so passe, not to mention a waste of your brilliant mind. So, what would be a greater thing to do this holiday than learning up a new science concept to satiate the geek within us? XD

A gear is a rotating machine part having cut teeth, or cogs, which mesh with another toothed part in order to transmit motion (torque). Geared devices can change the speed, magnitude, and direction of a power source.

The gear wheel being turned is called the input gear and the the one it drives is called the output gear.Gears with unequal numbers of teeth alter the speed between the input and out put. This is referred to as the Gear Ratio.

As you see from the diagram above, A and B has different number of teeth. Say, A has 10 teeth and B has 30 teeth, the Gear Ratio is 3 to 1 (ratio of the number of teeth of the output gear B to the number of teeth of the input gear A). That means, for every one full revolution of the input gear (A), the output gear only completes 1/3 revolution. This process is called Stepping Down.

Stepping Up

If the input gear has more teeth than the output gear, the ratio will be less than 1, and for every one full revolution of the input gear, the output gear completes more than 1 revolution. This is called Stepping Up.

In essence, you would want to step up if you want to create a fast movement. But note that this gain in speed is counterbalanced with much reduction in power. Often, the output gear of a stepping-up transmission becomes tensed and/or stuck as it does not have sufficient power to do work. Stepping down is then relevant as it gives you more power albeit at a slower rate.

Gears are widely used in today’s world. Example of its application is shown below:

1) Windshield wiper uses motorized gears to move the wiper arms to and fro around its pivot.

2) Bicycle gears are used in mountain bikes to adjust desired output power/speed. Lower gears (stepping-down gears) are used when traveling through an upward sloping terrain as it allows the biker to exert less power to do the same work, making it’s easier to climb the slope. Higher gears (stepping-up gears) are used when you want to whip up your bike speed to take over the biker in front of you.

Must gears always be round in shape? If your answer is yes, then think again.

You can follow the link given after the youtube video to create oddly-shaped gears of your own! That’s another real fun science project to do this holiday.

Are most of the things mixtures? or compounds? or elements?

shepherdlee — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 14:45:00 +0800

Ask yourself this question, as an individual human being, are you as whole organism, a compound? element? or mixture?

Guess the answer is fairly obvious, yes we are mixtures! Our body is a big soup of blood, body fluids, organs, tissues and cells that are also mixtures of their own.

Most things in this world are mixtures of various compounds and elements.

This concept of elements, compounds and mixture is a topic usually handled at lower secondary level science in the schools. Students often are not so ready to be able to tell how the various substances around them are classified.

Mixtures are material systems that consist of 2 or more different type of substances blended into each other. The components are not chemically combined. aka no chemical reaction was involved to lead to the formation of the mixture.

Compounds are strictly speaking molecules that is made up of 2 or more types of elements chemically combined. You can write chemical formula to them. There are much stricter rules associated to the formation of compounds, such as the percentage composition by mass.

Elements, well are all the names you see on a Periodic Table. They are the basic chemical units of matter.

Why bother to classify this anyway?

There is a point in doing this, people want to work with the materials they get and make new things. In order to do so, people often need to know the nature of the materials and how it works. This in a sense led to the beginnings of chemistry where people start to discover that not all things around us as easily separated into its parts.

Some stuff need to be purified from their original source form which can be mixed or chemically combined. Different techniques are required to obtain the components.

Mixtures only need physical separation techniques to get separated. We need to get pure salt from the sea. Singapore also depends partly on reverse osmosis for clean water.

Compounds need to be separated using chemical techniques. We need to get pure iron from iron ore.

This is actually so important in chemistry application that this has to be taught in both lower secondary science and upper secondary chemistry.

Get to Know: Violent Volcanoes

radicaldreamer07 — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0800

On October 25, 2010, the Merapi Mount of Indonesia erupted three times, spewing lava down its southern and southeastern slopes. The eruption took casualties, and still Scientists have warned that pressure building beneath Mount Merapi’s lava dome could trigger its most powerful eruption in years.

But what is a volcano?

A volcano is a landform (usually a mountain) where molten rock erupts through the surface of the planet.

In simple terms a volcano is a mountain that opens downward to a pool of molten rock below the surface of the earth. It is a hole in the Earth from which molten rock and gas erupt.

The name “volcano” has its origin from the name of Vulcan, a god of fire in Roman mythology.

As pressure in the molten rock builds up it needs to escape somewhere. So it forces its way up “fissures” which are narrow cracks in the earths crust. Once the magma (the liquid rock inside a volcano) erupts through the earth’s surface it’s called lava (the liquid rock that flows out of a volcano). Fresh lava ranges from 1,300° to 2,200° F (700° to 1,200° C) in temperature and glows red hot to white hot as it flows.

There are around 1510 ‘active’ volcanoes in the world. We currently know of 80 or more which are under the oceans. Over half of the world’s volcanoes arise in a belt around the Pacific Ocean called the Ring of Fire (About 90% of the world’s earthquakes and 80% of the world’s largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire!)

Zooming in on our neighbour country, Indonesia, we can see that the country mainly lies on active volcanoes.

The two most active volcanoes are the Merapi and Kelut volcanoes. Since the year 1000 AD, both have erupted more than 80 and 30 times respectively.

There are six known supervolcanoes in the world:

the Yellowstone (United States)
Long Valley (United States)
Valles Caldera (United States)
Lake Toba (Indonesia)
Taupo Volcano (New Zealand)
Aira Caldera (Japan)

Supervolcanic eruptions typically cover huge areas with lava and volcanic ash and cause a long-lasting change to weather.

Volcanic Eruption Index (VEI) records how much volcanic material (ejecta) is thrown out, how high the eruption goes, and how long it lasts. The scale goes from 0 to 8. An increase of 1 indicates a 10 times more powerful eruption.

The largest known supervolcanic eruption known to date is the Toba eruption (VEI 8) 74000 years ago, throwing the earth into 6 years of volcanic winter and nearly putting human population to extinction, and was deemed responsible for slowing down the rate of human evolution. A more recent supervolcanic eruption, but to a much lesser scale is the mount Tambora eruption (VEI 7), also in Indonesia, in 1815, with ejecta volume of about 100-kilometer cubes.

(Picture: Toba Lake has not been active since the super-eruption, and now is a popular tourist destination in Indonesia)

Science POP Quiz (Space Objects)

radicaldreamer07 — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:27:00 +0800

Think you know everything under the Sun? How about things that revolves around it? Take this short pop quiz and see how much you know about our universe!

1. What is the closest planet to the Sun?

2. What is the name of the 2nd biggest planet in our solar system?

3. What is the hottest planet in our solar system?

4. What planet is famous for its big red spot on it?

5. What planet is famous for the beautiful rings that surround it?

6. Can humans breathe normally in space as they can on Earth?

7. Is the sun a star or a planet?

8. Who was the first person to walk on the moon?

9. What planet is known as the red planet?

10. What is the name of the force holding us to the Earth?

11. Have human beings ever set foot on Mars?

12. What is the name of a place that uses telescopes and other scientific equipment to research space and astronomy?

13. What is the name of NASA’s most famous space telescope?

14. Earth is located in which galaxy?

15. What is the name of the first satellite sent into space?

16. Ganymede is a moon of which planet?

17. What is the name of Saturn’s largest moon?

18. Olympus Mons is a large volcanic mountain on which planet?

19. Does the sun orbit the Earth?

20. Is the planet Neptune bigger than Earth?

Answer

Mercury

Saturn

Venus

Jupiter

Saturn

No

A star

Neil Armstrong

Mars

Gravity

No

An observatory

Hubble Space Telescope

The Milky Way Galaxy

Sputnik

Jupiter

Titan

Mars

No

Yes

Now you see, now you don’t

radicaldreamer07 — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:07:00 +0800

Caution: the following post is not for the faint-hearted. You must LOVE chemistry in order to understand and appreciate the coolness of this experiment.

Some simple facts about Hexane and its properties:

Since hexane belongs to the alkanes, it follows the general formula C_nH_2n + 2.

Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons, this means that not only they consist only of Carbon and Hydrogen atoms, but these atoms are linked together exclusively by single bonds.

Hexanes are mainly obtained by refining the crude oil through fraction boiling.

The figure below shows simple setup that mimic the refining of crude oil.

In industry, hexanes are often used to manufacture strong glues, remove grease, or to extract cooking oils from seeds.

A special kind of hexane, called the Cyclohexane, is used as a nonpolar solvent in the chemical industry due to its inert property.

Cyclohexane

Both Hexane and Cyclohexane are highly flammable, so please be careful when you are carrying out an experiment involving these two substances.

DIY Plant Watering System

radicaldreamer07 — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:51:00 +0800

For the avid gardeners out there, have you ever wondered how to keep your plants alive and well during that long summer holiday in JB or other places abroad? Well, you can carry the pots to your porch or balcony and hope that it will rain regularly. But why leave the fate of your fancy plants to chance when you can easily whip up a simple contraption to water your plants while you are away?

Requirements:

A potted plant - plastic pot with holes in the bottom

2 saucers/trays, one about the diameter of the base of the pot, and another one about 2 cm larger in diameter as compared to the smaller one.

Some absorbent thread, e.g. cotton twine

How to make:

The large tray makes the base of the system. It is the place to hold water, but do not put too much water inside lest it becomes stagnant.

Put the smaller tray inverted inside the large tray. Make some v-shaped notches around its side so that water can seep through inside. This prevents the water from evaporating.

Wind the absorbent twine around the soil inside the pot and leave the free end inside the tray. Secure the pot on top of the smaller tray.

How to use:

Put water into the tray, about 1-2 cm deep. (The bottom of the pot shouldn’t be touching the water)

Replace weekly or when the water is entirely wicked up

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Think of what science concept is being applied here… Yes, it is the capillary action. Capillary action is the movement of water (liquid) through thin tubular spaces or porous media. The cotton twine here is the “narrow tube” and the soil acts as the porous media for capillary action to take place.

Where else can we find capillary action, in action? Revise transport in plants.

Funtastic Ferro Fluid!

radicaldreamer07 — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 10:00:00 +0800

Here’s a special piece of artwork that will make you go ‘wow’:

You may wonder, weren’t those liquid they had there? How could it acted as though it could move on its own will, solidified and formed spikes around those drill-like constructions? Quite a show-offish liquid we have here!

Well, the secret behind their ‘will’ lies at the fact that this liquid is ferromagnetic. Remember some principles of magnetism? Here’s one basic tenet: Opposites attract, equals repel!

(Psst, do you know that the earth is one gigantic magnet with two opposite poles at either end?)

Not all materials are magnetic. In terms of magnetic conductivity, matters could be classified as

Ferromagnetic literally translated as “magnetic like iron”; is materials which can be strongly magnetised

Diamagnetic materials that resists magnetization and weakly repel magnetic fields outside themselves

Paramagnetic objects can be induced and magnetized positively, but to a lesser extent as the ferromagnetic object

Magnetic behavior can be explained by the Domain Theory, read the stuff up!

If you would like to try it at home, here’s a link that is going to show you just how to do that:

Disclaimer: It’s going to get messy, so do conduct some precautions before attempting the experiment. You’ve been warned.

Screaming Balloon Experiment

radicaldreamer07 — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:51:00 +0800

Have you ever seen a screaming balloon? Watch this:

Now you can make it on your own! Here’s how to do it:

Prepare some latex balloons and some hex nuts . You can buy them at them at a convenience store in your neighborhood.
Put a hex nut inside the balloon, make sure that it goes all the way inside so that it will not get sucked out while you are blowing up the balloon.
Inflate the balloon, but be careful not to over-inflate it as it will burst easily. Tie it off and you are ready to go.
Hold the balloon palm down, and begin to swirl it in a circular motion. The hex nut may bounce at first, but it will circle the interior of the balloon eventually and there goes the loud screech :)

How does this happen?

The hex nut circles inside the balloon due to a centripetal force. In essence, centripetal force is the inward force on a body that causes it to move in a circular path. The centripetal force is always in the direction of the centre of rotation, perpendicular to the path of motion of the body.

Now, remember that a hex nut has 6 sides (hex = 6), and the screaming sound is made by the sides of the hex nut vibrating against the inside wall of the balloon.

If you try to use another solid with smooth edge, say your 20 cents coin, you may still produce the centripetal motion. But the eerie screech won’t be there anymore.

How about different balloon sizes? Have fun experimenting!

Interesting Mathematical jokes

maths-teacher — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 20:57:00 +0800

# Four friends have been doing really well in their calculus class: they have been getting top grades for their homework and on the midterm. So, when it’s time for the final, they decide not to study on the weekend before, but to drive to another friend’s birthday party in another city - even though the exam is scheduled for Monday morning.

As it happens, they drink too much at the party, and on Monday morning, they are all hung over and oversleep. When they finally arrive on campus, the exam is already over.  They go to the professor’s office and offer him an explanation: “We went to our friend’s birthday party, and when we were driving back home very early on Monday morning, we suddenly had a flat tire. We had no spare one, and since we were driving on backroads, it took hours until we got help.”  The professor nods sympathetically and says: “I see that it was not your fault. I will allow you to make up for the missed exam tomorrow morning.”

When they arrive early on Tuesday morning, the students are put by the professor in a large lecture hall and are seated so far apart from each other that, even if they tried, they had no chance to cheat. The exam booklets are already in place, and confidently, the students start writing.  The first question - five points out of one hundred - is a simple exercise in integration, and all four finish it within ten minutes.  When the first of them has completed the problem, he turns over the page of the exam booklet and reads on the next one:

Problem 2 (95 points out of 100): Which tire went flat?

# “Students nowadays are so clueless”, the math professor complains to a colleague. “Yesterday, student came to my office hours and wanted to know if General Calculus was a Roman war hero…” !!

# It is only two weeks into the term that, in a calculus class, a student raises his hand and asks: “Will we ever need this stuff in real life?”  The professor gently smiles at him and says: “Of course not - if your real life will consist of flipping hamburgers at MacDonald’s!”

# A math student is pestered by a classmate who wants to copy his homework assignment. The student hesitates, not only because he thinks it’s wrong, but also because he doesn’t want to be sanctioned for aiding and abetting.  His classmate calms him down: “Nobody will be able to trace my homework to you: I’ll be changing the names of all the constants and variables: a to b, x to y, and so on.”  Not quite convinced, but eager to be left alone, the student hands his completed assignment to the classmate for copying.  After the deadline, the student asks: “Did you really change the names of all the variables?”  ”Sure!” the classmate replies. “When you called a function f, I called it g; when you called a variable x, I renamed it to y; and when you were writing about the log of x+1, I called it the timber of x+1…”

Curve Shot: the Physics Behind

radicaldreamer07 — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:03:00 +0800

It’s football fever everywhere around the world! 32 teams, 64 matches to expect, and not to mention the unpredictable upsets (France held back 0-0 by Uruguay, England held back 1-1 by US.. I do expect more to come) What more the arguably expensive subscription fees for the matches charged by the 2 leading Singapore telcos. Surely, soccer is a thriving business, no?

Whether you aspire to be a professional football (or as the Americans say it: soccer) player, or the soccer ball manufacturer, you ought to know your physics. Don’t believe me? Then watch this video on how Adidas manufacture its Jabulani, the official FIFA World Cup 2010 soccer ball.

Didn’t you hear that, FIFA boasts Jabulani as the first aerodynamically soccer ball that required over six years of wind tunnel research! The complete manufacturing process for the ball can be watched here.

But lest you are more interested in playing soccer, here’s some tips on shooting a curve ball to confuse your opponents:

1) Know that the more spin a ball has, the more it will curve

2) Know where you want the ball to go. A ball that is spinning to the left will curve to the left, and vice versa

3) Know the right spot to kick. If you want the ball to curve left (i.e. spin to the left), you would have to kick it from slightly left of the centre of the ball. That ought to make it spin rapidly counter-clockwise.

The explanation behind this is the Magnus Effect, or the phenomenon whereby a spinning object experiences a force acting perpendicularly to the direction of motion.

As the ball spins, friction between the ball and air forces the air to move in the direction of spin of the ball. Hence, as the ball spins clockwise (seen above) it increases the velocity of the air around the bottom half of the ball and decreases the velocity of the air around the other side. Recall summation of vectors: the tangential velocity of the ball in the bottom half is in the same direction as the airflow while that in the opposite half is in the opposite direction to the airflow.

The resultant air speed at the bottom half of the ball is greater than the air spped around the top half of the ball, and thus the pressure is greater in top of the ball. Recall Bernoulli’s principle: air velocity is inversely proportional to air pressure.

Hence, when you kick the ball off-center and the ball spins left (counter-clockwise) the resultant force acts left, causing the ball to curve left, vice versa. (See below)

Now, you can try this strategy to make the path of your shot less predictable to your opponent’s goal keeper. Happy kicking! =)

How to quickly calculate squares of numbers ending in 5 without using calculator !

maths-teacher — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:56:00 +0800

Example 1:

35² = 35 * 35

add 1 to 3 = 4
multiply 4 by 3 =12
multiply 5 by 5=25
so answer for 35² = 1225

Example 2:

65² = 65 * 65

add 1 to 6 = 7
multiply 7 by 6 = 42
multiply 5 by 5=25
Answer for 65² = 4225

Example 3:

105² = 105 * 105

add 1 to 10 = 11
multiply 11 by 10 = 110
multiply 5 by 5=25
Answer for 105² = 11025

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The Maths Fun Quiz

maths-teacher — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 23:50:00 +0800

1) BINOMIAL MULTIPLICATION

What is the result of multiplying …(x-a) (x-b) (x-c)(x-d) ………………..(x-y)(x-z) = ?

2) CALCULATE AND GUESS

Type any number in your calculator
Add 7
Subtract 3
Press =
Multiply by 2
Add 6
Press =
Divide by 2
Subtract the number you typed
Press=

GUESS THE RESULT !!!* (Result will always be the same irrespective of what number you typed in !!)

3) LIGHT BULBS

There is a room with three light bulbs. Outside , there are three switches. The door is closed and you can only open it once. After you do it , you cannot push switches anymore. you have to find out which switch lights each bulb.

How would you do it ??

Wacky Wild World: Mesmerizing Mimicry

radicaldreamer07 — Mon, 31 May 2010 02:19:00 +0800

Think about what you would do to scare (jokingly, of course) your friends: You’d make some weird sounds, create some taunting motions, etc. In short, you become someone or something else. A copycat of something that you think your friends would be astonished of, or at least find creepy. Remember those bullies who act like hooligans?

Well, mimicry is the way animals and plants protect themselves from their bullies, i.e. the predators. They can do this by imitating other animals who are not as “defenseless”. In the following picture, the Flatworm mimics the Sea Slug as it gives off venomous (not to mention smelly!) chemicals that drive away predators.

Not only animals, plants also have mimicry capability. Ryes are weeds that mimic wheat that often dumbfound farmers upon harvest. See for yourself if you can distinguish the two!

Sadly, the “bullies” are capable of mimicry, too! Here’s the example of the predatory cicadas mimicking as leaves. Woe, you evil stalkers!

Some predators can even mimic the “cry” of their prey. Such strategy is often used by the Margay Cats while hunting down the Pied Tamarin Monkeys. They really don’t look alike, do they?

If you really interested about mimicry, do your own research online! The world is your oyster (and Google is your best friend on the net!) You can start exploring more here!

Of course, for those without mimicry ability, there are only 2 options remain: fight or flight!

To sum this up, let’s watch a recent discovery video about the Indonesian Mimic Octopus. Watch it now, it’s super cool!

Sink or float? Wow Singapore has submarines!

shepherdlee — Mon, 24 May 2010 14:57:00 +0800

Hoho that’s me together with RSS Conqueror.

I believe this is one (i think 1st thus the oldest) of the 4 Sjoormen class submarines Singapore bought from Sweden. It uses four 533mm torpedo tubes and 2 400mm torpedo tubes. It can carry 23 crew.

Yes, i went to the recent Singapore Navy Open House. Had a lot of fun walking around looking at various warships that has names as homely as “RSS Katong” (which i went on deck hehe), then i came across this fellow, RSS CONQUEROR! Wow, a more majestic name. Unfortunately we don’t get to go inside the submarine. I wanna sink into the depths of the ocean with it and spy through the periscope! ahaha

So how does submarines sink or float?

Objects with lower density than water will float on water.

Objects with higher density than water will sink.

The basic idea for a submarine is to be able to change the overall density of a submarine. How do they do it?

There is basically another compartment other than the space where the crew works, that this special space is meant for water and air to enter in and exit out.

This space is called the Ballast tank. It is like the swim bladder of a fish.

They pump air into the ballast tank of the submarine to reduce density so that the submarine floats.

They will let water into the submarine to increase density and the submarine will sink.

want to know more? read more about a certain topic called “buoyancy”.

Writing a Winning Composition: Lessons from the Art

radicaldreamer07 — Sun, 23 May 2010 00:00:00 +0800

Does the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” sound all too familiar to you? Famous artists in history employed different strategies to pique the interest of their audience, making their artwork highly regarded by many. Now, let’s take a quick look on the different styles and pick up a couple of pointers that we can use in writing our composition assignment.

Impressionism was prominent in France between 1870s and 1880s, with renowned artists such as Claude Monet. Impressionist paintings are characterized by their visible brush strokes, unusual visual angles and a strong emphasis on lighting effect. The overall result is a fleeting sensory experience that is highly scintillating to the brain.

Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (1872)

As a writer, you can make use of metaphors and figurative language to allow readers to form a more loose interpretation of the subject matters. While this style of writing is often employed in creative writing, you must exercise caution when using words that are ambiguous in nature. Best avoided if the question specifies that you must write in a descriptive/objective/expository manner.

Pointillism, as the name suggests, is a technique of painting that involves small, distinct dots of pure color in patterns in order to form an image analogous to what a regular colour inkjet printer would produce (with bigger and more distinct dots). The result: a unique grainy sensation that gives body to the overall theme.

Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1886

Just as the smaller, distinct dots give more substance to the big picture, you may accentuate the details in your writing to substantiate your point. Use elaboration, examples and figures to help the audience concur with your point. Otherwise, your statement may be dismissed as a mere opinion.

Cubism was a 20^th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Cubist artworks break objects up and analyze their parts from different angles and perspectives before finally assembling them back in an abstracted form. One effect you would expect to see in a Cubist painting: a perception of depth and thought-provoking edges in a nonetheless 2-dimensional canvass.

Pablo Picasso’s Le Guitariste (1910)

Interested in adopting the cubist strategy in your writing? Think what is at the heart of your sentence. Break them down to pieces. Replace that multiple adjectives or adverbs with strong verbs and nouns. Pack equal or more punch in shorter words. Compare “the tall, dark and handsome man ran quickly to save the drowning lady in distress” with “the lifeguard raced to Eva’s rescue”. “The lifeguard” would evoke a completely different image in your readers’ minds, and it would likely be a stronger image than “the tall, dark and handsome man”.

Op-Art, also known as optical art, it is a style of visual art that makes use of optical illusions. Illusions of movement include, but not restrictive to: flashing, swelling, warping, rotating, vibrating among other things. The effect: a groundbreaking experience in that stimulates our nerves in a titillating manner.

Examples of Op-Art pictures. Do you feel that the squares in the first picture are moving and that the curves in the second picture are rotating in opposite directions? The third picture really consists of equal-sized squares!

Now if you notice, the illusions of motion in Op-Art paintings arise due to the use of highly contrasting colours. Similarly, you should make use of the different perspectives, even the seemingly contradictory ones, to make your writing more interesting. Lop-sided composition bores the readers as it shows the writers’ negligence to the nuances in the topic. Beware of writing self-defeating arguments, nonetheless. It makes no sense to write “I agree to capital punishment but I despise capital punishment.” Contrast the elements of the overarching ideas instead, to maneuver around your argument: “While capital punishment incapacitates the criminals from committing any further crimes, a justification for its enactment, it must be acknowledged that there is no such thing as a humane method of putting a person to death, irrespective of the manner of the execution.” You may still craft your stand at this point (for or against), but make sure your stand is coherent throughout your composition.

Writing Tips Summary

1) Use metaphors, idioms, parables and other form of figurative language to invoke reader’s emotions. Do not tell them what to feel, reel them into it.

2) Accentuate the details with description, elaboration, real-world examples or statistics to substantiate your point.

3) Focus on interesting nouns and verbs. Are there long sentences that can be broken down to smaller, more digestible bits? Short words have more punch. They put things in motion.

4) Different perspectives make your piece of writing richer and fluid. In creative writing, you may twist the events to create page-turning literary illusions. (Consider Rowling’s ambiguous depiction of Snape in the Harry Potter series)

Happy writing!

Exam Strategies - How to Prepare for Exams?

shepherdgordon — Sat, 15 May 2010 23:59:00 +0800

“Why is my child not performing in exams?”

“Why can I score well for normal practices, but I just cannot seem to do well in exams?”

“Are there secret tips to exams?”

These are the few questions that students and parents will always ask regarding the students’ performance in their examinations. Besides being lazy and not studying for examinations, there are actually many important factors that will affect the results of the examinations.

To better help students prepare for examinations, we recommend students to follow the following 7 strategies:

1. Always be CONSISTENT in studying

Consistency is one the most important aspect in studying. Most students who revise daily on what they have learnt and read up before going for lessons, can retain the information better than others who don’t. This is because with immediate practice and revision, it allows you brain to absorb the knowledge more in depth and your brain will be working at a constant pace instead of being overstressed due to last minute studying. Most successful people in the world are consistent and being very discipline with their life milestones.

2. Setting Mini Milestones that are Easy to Reach

Most students will always reply you that he/she would love to get A’s at the end of the year when he/she is only scoring Grade C to Grade E at the start of the year. By setting such a goal or milestone, it seems very difficult to get as there will be a great jump to get to the goal. Therefore, to ensure that the goal is easier to reach, students should set mini milestones, such as getting B during common test and aiming for A’s for common test in the later half of the semester. As students, you can also aim to ensure that you only get a number of questions wrong in your daily practices. This is similar to climbing a mountain, you set short term targets to climb up to various ranges, before proceeding to the tip. There is no one who climbs all the way up to the peak of Mount Everest from the Basecamp.

3. Study SMART not just HARD

Often you will hear teachers to tell you to study hard, but that is not the most efficient way. One must learn to study smart. By studying smart, you must know what is your weakness and what are your strength. Work on your strengths, but also spend time on your weakness. Do not keep doing same questions that you are very well-versed with. Instead spend more time on questions that you feel that you are weak at. Always understand what you are learning before attending practices as this will build the foundation to do the questions more efficiently.

4. Create Good Study Habits

What are good study habits? How can one do away with bad study habits to adopt good study habits? Firstly, you need to study in an environment that you will not get distracted easily. For some students, it will be at home and for others will be in places like libraries or even Le Shepherd Education Centre. Next, you need to ensure that you do not study for too long a period. You should study 50 minutes to 1 hour for every session and rest for 15 minutes before starting the next session. Always start with the subjects you are weak at as you will be at your sharpest at the start. Ensure that you keep your sugar level high not by eating very sweet substances like candies, but moderate and healthy food such as fruits and fruit juices.

5. Know Your Examinations Well

Most students do not know what they will be tested on and examinations format until the very last minutes such as 1 week before. “Knowing the Enemy is half the Battle Won.” Therefore, by knowing the examinations format at the start is already half the “battle” won. This means that you will be have a big picture of what is going on in the syllabus and as you revise weekly, you can plan your strategies and milestones to suit your syllabus and examinations format. To know more information on the formats, you can ask your teacher or for Singaporeans, you can view it on Examinations Board website.

6 Ask for Help when needed

When students are asked about whether they understand the content they are studying, they will normally nod their head. However, most students are too shy or even afraid to ask teachers. What students misunderstood is that most teachers teach because they would like to help their students as much as possible. Therefore, as a student, you should approach your teacher for consultation whenever you have any questions. If your teacher is not approachable, feel free to look for your tuition tutors or even email us at Le Shepherd Education Centre.

7. Sleep Early

The most important aspect is actually to sleep early not only before examinations, but daily. By sleeping early, you will be more alert in class and will be able to absorb knowledge more in depth. This is because your brain will be fresh and filled with oxygen needed to be attentive in lessons. Moreover when you sleep early before examinations, you will be mentally and physically prepared for examinations instead of being tense and stressed up. In this way, you will be able to handle your examinations well-composed.

In the following weeks, I will be blogging about the exact details of individual strategy to better guide you for your examinations. So do look out for the posts.

Borrowed words from Italian!

literarygunslinger — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:46:00 +0800

As we all know (or not), the English language is full of borrowed words from languages such as French, German, Spanish and Italian, to name a few.

Last week, the Lower Secondary students had a chance to learn about popular Italian dishes. These delicious delicacies have not only found their way into our stomachs and local restaurants, but also into the English language! Here’s a visual recap of some of the dishes we learnt:

Antipasto - An appetizer typically consisting of olives, anchovies, cheese and meats.

Lasagna - A baked dish consisting of alternate layers of pasta, cheese, sauce and minced meat. Available at Pizza Hut!

Vongole - Clams. Pictured above is a typically Italian blend of Spaghetti, olive oil and vongole! Perfect for seafood-lovers.

Espresso - I’m sure you guys have heard of this one before. It’s a strong black coffee made by forcing steam through ground black beans. Available at - you guessed it - Starbucks, Coffeebean and Spinelli!

Focaccia - A type of flat bread made with yeast and olive oil and flavoured with herbs. Available at DeliFrance and bakeries such as Four Leaves and BreadTalk (certain outlets only).

Risotto - Rice cooked in stock with other ingredients such as meat and vegetables. Head over to Original Sin for one of the best Risottos in Singapore.

Ironman can create a new element at home, then we can do it too!

shepherdlee — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:23:00 +0800

[CAUTION! potential spoilers]

in the movie Ironman 2, Tony Stark was able to make a new element using a homemade particle accelerator.

Isn’t that quite impressive? (or rather cute)

1. His new element came up to a size of a small triangle that can fit on his chest. New super heavy elements that were synthesized thus far lasted less than a millisecond after detection. They did not even last long enough to form a size of a speck of dust. These elements radioactively decay (a.k.a. disappear) too fast. Ironman’s homemade element maybe bigger than our ezlink card!

2. In order to create new element, you have to bombard small size atoms such as calcium 10, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 times onto some huge atom just to hope that it can form a new element. How long that can take? Ironman did that in 1 afternoon?

3. The recent hadron collider (a kind of particle accelerator) built by CERN is about 27km round of tubes that can almost fill Singapore. Ironman’s particle accelerator fit his living room. This is really difficult to believe! This kind of small size particle accelerator can reach how many electronvolts? Maybe it can only demostrate some simple isotopes existence? Creating a new element with such a tiny accelerator can only happen in movies!

Nevertheless, the movie itself other that the new element creating part was superbly entertaining. Everyone in the cinema was laughing like crazy. I enjoyed it very much too.

However, sadly, the way some movies out there belittles scientific research can be disturbing.

Welcome to Le Shepherd Education Centre's Website!

shepherdgordon — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:27:00 +0800

Hi all!

After 4 good years, we decide to launch a fully functional website that will expand to one of the most interactive educational source for you in the future!

What is Le Shepherd Education Centre? How do the courses work? Who are part of the team?

Remember those days that you walked past this centre in Roxy Square at East Coast Road and you hear people shouting Peek-a-Boo!? What about the experience you had when you hear people saying, “Wow! This centre has a fully equipped laboratory!”, “Mum! This is really cool!”

You always see people peeking into Le Shepherd Education Centre, so do you want to know more about it? Click here to know more!

What about our courses and our team? Love to know more about us? Start reading and follow us by subscribing to us or add us to your RSS feed. You can also join our Twitter and Facebook page to get more information!

Start exploring Le Shepherd Education Centre and experience a whole new way of learning. You will love it, once you are with us.

Le Shepherd Education Centre - Your Education, Our Business.