Ahurea/Culture Unit Reflection

Hi everyone,

This is a chistera.

I learnt in this unit, that there are multiple different aspects of culture. I mostly looked at music and sports.

First we looked at New Zealand icons and for our icon you had to choose 5 items like a time parcel, for 2 of the items they had to be related to New Zealand, and for the other 3 they had to be related to the icon. For my New Zealand icon I chose Lorde (the pop singer,) and for the items I chose: A NZ flag, a greenstone necklace, a microphone, a dress, and a disc.

When we looked at European cultures, I looked at the Spanish culture. Did you know that there is a Spanish sport called Basque Pelota. Which is kind of like squash, but instead of a racket it has like a claw type thing called a chistera and, there is only one chistera workshop in the world! Something like that is definitely not true for rugby balls, that’s for sure.

In Spanish culture, I also looked at Spanish traditional music like: flamengo, jota, and macarena. Another thing I looked at is traditional instruments for example: bongo, and castanets are both Spanish traditional instruments. If I were to compare kapa haka to Spanish music it would have some stuff in common, like both might use a form of guitar, and they both have a form of dance, but they are definitely different music, for example: The beat in Kapa Haka is very strong, while in a flamengo dance the beat blends into the music.

So basically I’m trying to say our cultures may be different, but no matter what our cultures make us who we are.

– Charlie Dorssers

Chlorophyll and Light!

Hello everyone, today I’ll be showing you an experiment we did yesterday. If you want to do it yourself then this is what you’ll need: a mortar & pestle, filter paper, iso-propyl-alcohol, scissors, 3 nice green leaves, a UV light, a funnel, a test tube, and a fume chamber/a dark place.

This is the stuff you get when you are finished grinding.

First we grabbed the leaves and used the scissors to cut them into small pieces, once you have cut the leaves, then you could start with the hard part now you have to get the cut up leaves, put them into the mortar and then add some of the iso-propyl-alcohol, then grind it up with the pestle for about 10 – 12 minutes until you get a dark green pulp. After you get the colour in the picture, now you get your filter paper and fold it in half two times. Put your folded filter paper in the funnel, then filter out the pulp into the test tube. After you have filtered it all into the test tube go to a dark place/fume chamber and shine the UV light on the test tube and watch the chlorophyll glow a green/purple light and make energy.

This is the filtered pulp under a UV light.

This helped me to realise that Chlorophyll doesn’t need the plant or natural sun light to produce energy. It did this by glowing under the UV light.

I loved making this with my partner Luke, it was tons of fun and I totally recommend it. So what are you waiting for try it yourself and see if you get the same results, or maybe even better.

Charlie Dorssers

Culture Lesson!

Our culture is our way to express ourselves and our likes and dislikes. Some important aspects of culture are music because of the different styles like, acapella (A European version of music that only uses voices, no instruments), and R&B (An African-American type of music), and instruments like the banjo (A north american, 4 string instrument), and the Didgeridoo (an Australian tube instrument).

Pentatonix
Pentatonix is a pop band that uses acapella instead of instruments.

The relationship between tuakiri (Identity, person, and personality) and ahurea (Culture) is that they are both ways to express who you are and what you want to be, and they are related to each other but they are not inseparable. 

The spirit between the two words are, Culture’s spirit is the spirit of why you do stuff like why do you eat that way, why do you sing in the shower, that is the spirit of culture, and the spirit of Identity, personality, and person is how you do things like if you do Christmas at your house, or at your distant cousins house, or maybe weather you drink with a straw or not. So you’re probably thinking how does drinking with a straw, involve identity, well it is how you might drink right? Well I don’t drink like that’s for sure, and that is one of the ways that identity is related to drinking with a straw. It’s part of who you are. Well, maybe not drinking with a straw but you get what I mean.

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