Annaliese has gathered information on Pompeii and presented a very engaging piece of Buzz News! Enjoy.

Pompeii

By Annaliese Mitchell

On August the 24^th 79 AD the Italian volcano called Mount Vesuvius erupted and covered the Roman city of Pompeii in 5 meters of ash and pumice. Pompeii was lost for nearly 2,000 years. It was forgotten. Then it was rediscovered by a Spanish explorer in 1599. Now it has been dug up. It is a very exciting place to visit because we can see how the Roman people lived back then.

Imagine the day of the eruption. First the ground shook. Then light ash stated to fall. After that more and more ash fell. The people had never seen an eruption before. They didn’t even know what a volcano was because Mount Vesuvius had not erupted for 700 years. Many of them did not even run away because they thought it was the whole world ending. They got buried.  

  

Today you can see where they were buried-

And here is what their Temple of Jupiter looked like.

Can you see the volcano in the background?

Here is a street-

Here is a rich man’s house-

                   

Now a big problem is how to protect these ancient treasures against the weather. When they were buried they were protected. Now that they are dug up, they are being damaged by the weather and footprints of the tourists. Sadly in 2010 the House of the Gladiators collapsed because rain washed the foundations out.

I would like to see it one day.

Last term we looked at how to harness the wind's energy to create more sustainable electricity. We gathered information and wrote explanations about this.

Wind Energy

By Tom Going

Wind is very useful. We use it for sailing, wind surfing, when we fly a kite and to dry our clothes. But what is wind?

Wind is moving air. It moves at different speeds and at different altitudes in the atmosphere. Air can move in the form of hot and cold currents. The heat energy from the sun warms the land and sea. This warms the air above. Now the warm air rises, because warm air is lighter than cold air. As the warm air goes higher in to the atmosphere it becomes cold air and begins to sink. Wind is made when the hot and cold currents rush past one another. This is called convection.

Wind turbines use the wind and harness its energy. A wind turbine is a modern form of windmill that is used to make electricity. Sometimes a group of turbines is sited together. This is known as a wind farm.  A wind turbine will make the most electricity when it is facing the wind. Turning the rotor to face the wind is called yawing. To do this, small turbines have a vane, which works a bit like a rudder on a boat. Large wind turbines use electric motors and gears. A computer, which is constantly checking the wind speed and direction, controls these. A generator and other machinery, needed to produce electricity, are kept safe from the elements in a box called a nacelle. This sits just behind the rotter. As the wind blows, the blades on the turbine's rotter begin moving. This turns a shaft that carries the power to a gearbox, where cogs increase the speed at which a second shaft turns. This second shaft carries the power to the generator. This machine spins magnets inside bundles of copper wire. This produces electricity. The electricity then travels down a copper wire into the earth to power our homes.          

We need to think about where we put wind turbines. One of the conditions needed for a wind turbine is a constant flow of wind, about 40 km per hour at most. New Zealand’s South Island is perfectly positioned in the middle of the Roaring Forties, an area of constantly moving air. The city of Wellington is also in the Roaring Forties. So hills in the South Island and Wellington are perfect places to put a wind turbine.

There are two main disadvantages of wind energy. First, wind turbines only produce electricity when the wind is blowing at more than 20 km per hour. That is why wind farms are only found in places that have a constant wind flow of 40 km per hour at most. Second, wind turbines are large and wind farms take up a lot of space. Some people think they are ugly, and birds fly into them. But the bird problem is under control, as their migration routes are being mapped, and wind turbines and farms are being placed to avoid them.

I’ve had a think. To conclude I believe that the advantages of wind-turbine-generated electricity outweigh the disadvantages. One turbine up one the hills in Wellington powers around 900 homes a year. This saves a lot of carbon dioxide from being pumped in to the atmosphere. This is important to reduce climate change, and costs will come down because machinery and maintenance are a lot cheaper. Also when more people buy wind turbines the price will come down.  But we just have to get use to them, or get used to living in a junk yard. What do you think?                    

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