As I was unable to attend it’s over to
Mr Arthur for this report.
On Friday we
embarked on a trip to G24 Innovations near Rhymney in Cardiff. After a false
start (we got on the wrong bus!!) we arrived a little late to the G24i factory
to be greeted by a welcoming party who took us to our own education suite,
which would be our base for the day. The huge room was kitted out with state of
the art equipment which we would later get our hands on!
After a very
informative talk about the company telling us what it does and explaining its
environmentally friendly core values we were taken on a guided tour of the
factory, where we were lucky enough to see where solar panels were being made
out of recycled batteries. We then braved the weather outside for a quick look
at the wind turbine, polytunnel and allotment (more on these later!)
After the tour had
finished we were split back into our Stats in sounds groups, and were each
given an area and set of equipment to use in order to capture the different
sounds and images of the G24i factory. We used a range of equipment including
tripod mounted video recorders, digital cameras and laptops to build up a
picture of the site and what it does.
We stopped for a
spot of lunch before rotating the groups (each went to a different area) and
swapping over some equipment. This meant that everyone had an opportunity to
have hands on experience with the different equipment, capturing different
environments.
There were many
interesting things to capture and record at G24i, including the large factory floor, the
electric car charge station and the wild grass land on site, the most popular
areas to record appeared to be the turbine and the Polytunnel, with good reason!
The turbine was an
enormous structure (It is the largest man made structure in Cardiff, we
actually followed it to get directions!!) and we learnt some fascinating facts
about how fast the turbine arms move (200mph!!) and what happens if the wind
picks up (it moves faster!)
The polytunnel,
although impressive on the outside held many surprises. We learnt that in the
summer months, the gardener had to work only in the night time because the
temperatures could exceed 120 degrees in the day! The most exciting discovery
of what was being grown inside, something even hotter than the summer
temperatures… the rare and EXTREMELY hot chillies! We were given an excellent
tour of the tunnel, where we were told all about the rare chillies and tomatoes
on show, and some brave, brave children even attempted to eat some of them (seeds
and all!!) However the tunnel held one more surprise, the class was very kindly
donated a Jalapeno Chilli pepper along with an as yet unnamed plant!
After all this
excitement, and scorching heat, it was unfortunately time to say our very warm
thank you and head back home to school with our found knowledge and plants
intact. Everyone is now extremely excited to be continuing with our Stats in
sound project on Monday and Friday where we will begin to thread together all
the data we have collected so far!
These photos were added to the @StatsInSound Twitter feed.
