Students at Sydney’s St Peters Public School have been studying Antarctica. What have they been looking at, and what questions have they asked? K1 children are around 6 years old.
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These are some of the things we have learnt about Antarctica.
Penguins use their wings as flippers to swim.- Jack
Emperor Penguins have black and white and a little bit of orange feathers. -Suhit.
Penguins food is fish. -Jonathan.
Penguins swim for fish. -Maile.
Penguins slide on their bellies. -Lucas
Penguins hold their breath for 20 minutes under water. -Chloe.
These are questions that we hope you can answer.
How deep can penguins swim? Class R
How long do penguins live? -Class R.
How Cold is Antarctica? -Abby.
Do you like living in Antarctica? -Suliasi.
Why do you like Antarctica? -Maud.
How deep is the water in Antarcica? -Ryan.
Thankyou.
Some answers to your questions have been provided by Ken Wilson, who has spent some time amongst penguins on Macquarie Island, Cape Dennison, Davis and Mawson. Ken has worked as ship and station doctor since the 1980s, on various scientific expeditions with the Australian Antarctic Division.
How deep can penguins swim? Class R
Penguins dive to maybe 200m. Mostly they dive to shallower depths.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m370233711n37r78/
How long do penguins live? -Class R.
This varies between individuals and species. Average of 15-20years.
See this webpage for some good answers.
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Penguins/longevity.html
How Cold is Antarctica? -Abby.
It can get to as cold as minus 56 deg Celsius on the high central plateau, but around the coastline minus 35 deg in winter and a maximum of plus 5deg on a hot summers day.
Do you like living in Antarctica? -Suliasi.
yes
Why do you like Antarctica? -Maud.
Antarctica is vast and in many parts unspoilt. It is a place of contrasts, being cold and barren with hard sharp divisions except where life intrudes at the edges in the form of a raucous penguin colony, that is noise and feathers and guano, and continual disputes over pebbles.
How deep is the water in Antarctica? -Ryan.
The oceans around Antarctica are quite deep as the ocean floor falls steeply away from the coast and there are few islands away from the coast. Deepest is 2-3km.
The ice on Antarctica can be up to several kilometers deep on top of the land, but in places the tops of mountains poke through.
Leopard seals are a major predator of penguins.
Antarctic expeditioner Geoffrey Williams, who worked on Casey in 1964, has an amusing but scary story to tell about that here:
http://www.antarcticanimation.com/content/thesaurus/l/leopardseal01.php
Thank you for answering our questions and also for having Ken Wilson answer our questions.
We have talked about your answers and looked at the web links you have given us.
We have enjoyed learning about Antarctica and today we had a talk with our student teacher who has actually been on to the boat “Aurora Australis” for a school excursion in Tasmania. We looked at pictures of the boat on the internet and she told us about the conditions on board.
We like the animals in Antarctica and we also like how Antarctica is not polluted and we hope it stays that way.
We liked the story about the leopard seal and we were hoping they would catch it.
We have also looked at your pictures from Antarctica and we like them a lot.
Thank you,
Class R
Thank you for sharing your research with us!
And I’m glad you found the site interesting.
Best wishes,
Lisa