Download 7th March 2016 - St Josephs College, Borrisoleigh

Mental Health Week 2016
This week is Mental Health Week and our school decided to use the week to educate the students
on different topics that hoped to emphasise the importance of positive mental health.
To begin the week we had Theresa Murray in to speak to us on Friday the 26th also a coffee day was
held.
On Monday Seamus Hennessy spoke to us about his experiences and he emphasised the importance
of positive mental health.
Tuesday the 5th and sixth years attended a talk on The Myths and Facts of Suicide in order to help
the students understand more about mental health and suicide.
On Thursday we had Tipperary Manager Michael Ryan in to talk to the students about how sport
affected his life and the importance it has in your life showing the students how he overcame
challenges in his life in order to be where he is today.
On Friday we had a Walk in My Shoes competition in which students wore their craziest shoes which
they felt describes them best.
Overall it was an enjoyable and educational week for both students and teachers.
Pauric O Meara
Student council members Richard O Donoghue and Joanne Minogue with Aisling Power winner of
"Walk in my shoes" competition
CanSat
What is CanSat?
A CanSat is a simulation of a real satellite, integrated within the volume and shape of a soft drink
can. The challenge for the students is to fit all the major subsystems found in a satellite, such as
power, sensors and a communication system, into this minimal volume. The CanSat is then launched
to an altitude of a few hundred metres by a rocket or dropped from a platform or captive balloon
and its mission begins: to carry out a scientific experiment and achieve a safe landing.
Basically our team is designing and building a mini satellite. We have been set a primary mission and
have to develop a secondary mission
The primary mission will be to measure air pressure and air temperature at different altitudes and
try to graph the correlation between them using the data obtained.
As of yet our secondary mission is classified but we will always be trying to achieve something extra
with our CanSat.
Our CanSat will be launched on the 4th of March at the regional finals of the ESERO competition. It
will be brought up to a certain height (400m) by a quadcopter and then released. With the aid of a
parachute our CanSat will then descend back to the ground, all the while collecting data and
transmitting it back to us. The results of the flight will be live streamed on our website –
www.copernicus.xyz
We keep our Facebook page active with our updates on our project but more importantly we use it
as a medium for communicating with our school and local community. On it you will find many ideas
that can be used with children and students of all ages.
Space Themed Vocabulary
We here at St. Josephs College Borrisoleigh CanSat team want to inform you about space and teach
you about space exploration. As members of the team we need to know a lot about space. We want
to educate you, our community about different things in space and clear up any misconceptions.
Firstly, we’ll explain some terminology you maybe used to hearing but not fully understand.
We’ll begin first with satellites since that is what we are supposed to make for our project. A natural
satellite is any body that orbits a planet. That makes the moon our natural satellite. Artificial
satellites are objects placed into orbit around the earth or other bodies in space by humans.
Satellites are usually self-independent, robot-controlled or computer-controlled systems. The first
artificial satellite was Sputnik 1 which was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. Since then,
thousands of satellites have been launched into orbit around the earth.
Satellites are used for collecting information, taking pictures, communications and to provide real
time data such as GPS – Geostationary Positioning Satellite.
A meteor is a small rocky or metallic body travelling through space. Most are fragments from comets
or asteroids, whereas others are collision impact debris ejected from bodies such as the Moon or
Mars. A meteorite are the pieces of the meteor that survive the collision into our atmosphere and
can land on earth.
A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting
electromagnetic radiation (such as visible light). The first known practical telescopes were invented
in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 17th century, using glass lenses. They found use in
terrestrial applications and astronomy.
Within a few decades, the reflecting telescope was invented, which used mirrors. In the 20th century
many new types of telescopes were invented, including radio telescopes in the 1930s and infrared
telescopes in the 1960s. The word telescope now refers to a wide range of instruments detecting
different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in some cases other types of detectors.
The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it,
either directly or indirectly. Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the
planets, with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets and small Solar
System bodies. Of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the
smallest planet, Mercury.
And that’s a few of the space vocabulary that you might here on a daily basis explained!