Admiral Byrd

Richard Byrd was a famous explorer of the nineteen thirties. He had a mission with some other scientists to explore and map out Antarctica for the first time. They built a base called Little America. While the other scientists stayed at the base Byrd stayed in an underground shelter for 6 months to research the area and discover new things. Some of the worst days it was -60 degrees F.  The temperature was low enough that you could see your breath freeze in mid air and icicles grew from your nose. One day Byrd was trudging through the snow and he saw a big crevice in the ice. Later he said that he could not see the bottom even with his light. After months of being tired and cold he finally received a message from Little America saying that they were going to pick him up and return to America. Two days later he received another message saying that they could not find him. The search party had to turn back, but then Admiral Byrd had an idea.  He grabbed some string and covered it in oil and lit it and tied a kite to it and waved it in the air.  Later Admiral Byrd saw head lights of a tractor and some more men came out to take him back to base.    

A video we watched about him:
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/places/regions-places/polar-regions/antarctica_byrdexpedition/



book we read on him...


His photo:

Titanic Tragedy

I am reading a book about the Titanic Tragedy on the Pacific ocean. 

The Titanic was the biggest and the most luxurious ship at that time. It was to sail from England to New York on April 10,1912. An interesting part about the Titanic is that it was 46,000 tons and the height of a 14 story house with 29 boiler rooms and 15,000 horsepower. Also it had four cylinder engines to run all the propellers which were 8 meters in diameter and 38 tons each. The fastest speed the Titanic could go was 24 knots with all boilers and engines going. After four days at sea the ship encountered an iceberg on april 14, 1912 that was 60 meters tall. It cut an 100 meters gash across the ship letting in 8,000 liters of water a minute. Thankfully the designer of the ship was aboard and the men asked him if it was fatal. The designer said that they had about two hours until it would sink. The crew started to get everyone up and out of bed and in to the life boats. The radio man for the ship started to tap out messages to other ships for help. All other ships were to far away to help. Of the 2,208 people aboard 1,503 died 705 lived.  The route of the Titanic is posted below.

Italy project

A few weeks ago I did a project on Italy. I made a map of Italy and did a craft. The craft was clay working. I made an alligator and a hammerhead shark out of clay. Some of the famous Artists in Italy were Leonardo da Vinci,Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo. One of the best paintings was the Sistine Chapel.

Lego Mindstorm

This year I got a lego mindstorm for Christmas! My dad and I built it into a car and we programmed it to make noise and to move around. For programming Lego mindstorm you get a CD with the mindstorm lego and you have to fill out something on lego.com and you use the software they include.You can do a sequence of commands such as "turn right", "turn left" or"make a noise". It also has a color sensor which detects colored objects and the touch sensor if it touches something it will change direction.

Here is a picture and video of it.