A variety of resources and activities designed for young tamariki right through to community groups and practice for current students.
Kia ora, nau mai, tauti mai! Welcome to the UC Earth Science Garden!
Here is a list of the kinds of things we can currently offer in the garden to schools and community:
- Geology rocks and relationships, geological and landscape history of the South Island
- Talk about geology themed pūrākau of the South Island regions
- The scientific method in the field, observations, sketching etc through to interpretations
- Native NZ plants of the South Island linked to rock types and regions
- Volcano in a Barrel experiment - physics of eruptions, viscosity and ballistics plus a great explosion!
- Chemistry of minerals, rocks and weathering reactions
- Fossils and evidence of evolution
- Tectonics and earthquake movements, faults and folds (how they form and what they do to the landscape), the Alpine Fault
- Earth resources and materials, uses of minerals and rocks
- Relative and absolute dating methods
- Lesson plans for schools
In progress:
- Looking deeper into the hidden world of rocks - minerals and thin sections
- Insects and invertebrate monitoring and plantings
- Butterfly garden
- Ground Source Heat Pump - heating the campus using water from the ground - aquifers, core samples (can talk about this already at least but a display will be coming)
- Carbon capture and storage for Climate Change using rocks, Carbon cycle
- Pūrākau with artwork, Canterbury Plains - He Awa Whiria, braiding Mātauranga with Geology
- Geocache and Discovery Trail
Please watch this space for resources to be added in the near future and/or if you would like to book your school, community or have a general enquiry please contact earthandenvironment@canterbury.ac.nz
