Science Centre - Explore New Horizons At The Revamped Omni-Theatre

Science Centre Singapore

Jurong East

West, Singapore

May 2015

The Science Centre Singapore Omni-Theatre reopens on 30 May 2015. Digitally enhanced with the world's latest 8K digital fulldome system, it allows you, the theatre goer, to have a digitally immersive experience by traveling beyond physical boundaries to remote locations on Earth and the solar system in the comfort of your seat.

On Southeast Asia's largest seamless some screen, you can enjoy a selection of digital fulldome movies and "live" shows with topical real-time presentations conducted by knowledgeable science educators. Each show is introduced with high-resolution graphics, along with real-time images from the American Museum of Natural History and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

With this new technology, science educators can now have full control over where they want to bring their audiences, what they want to show, and through this learning journey, introduce them to space science and exploration.

The host welcoming all guests to the revamped experience...

A chaotic cluster of green words - all the man-made satellites |
that are roaming round the earth at this very moment...

Watch the Earth's rotation on its axis with the orbiting satellites...

Move on to the Moon, Earth's very own satellite, including the "dark side" that faces space...

Singapore at night, one bright blob with smaller dots where HDB estates are located
and yellow light streamers for roads...

Seconds later, be zapped to the tallest peaks on Earth
and see Mount Everest in person at the Himalayas...

Mars

The hue from the "Red Planet" comes from "rusty" surface rich in iron oxide formed from surface iron reacting with oxygen in the air and liquid water from long ago to create a film of iron oxide.

 

Located along the equator of Mars, on the east side of the Tharsis Bulge, the Valles Marineris (Latin for Mariner Valleys) stretches for nearly a fifth of the planet’s circumference. At more than 4,000 km, 200 km wide and up to 10 km deep, the rift system is one of the largest canyons of the Solar System, even larger than Earth's Grand Canyon in the United States.

Jupiter

Jupiter is a gas giant planet. Its atmosphere is made up of mostly hydrogen gas and helium gas, just like the sun. The planet's surface is covered in thick red, brown, yellow and white clouds.

The Great Red Spot is a giant, spinning storm in Jupiter's atmosphere. It is like a hurricane on Earth, but it is much larger. Jupiter's Great Red Spot is more than twice the size of Earth! Winds inside this storm reach speeds of about 270 miles per hour. Unlike hurricanes and cyclones on Earth, which come and go in a matter of days, this iconic oval has endured for centuries.

Saturn

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. its rings are the most extensive planetary ring system of any planet in the Solar System. They consist of countless small particles, ranging in size from micrometres to metres, that orbit about Saturn. The ring particles are made almost entirely of water ice, with a trace component of rocky material.

From a different angle, the rings are hardly visible...

Neptune

Neptune, another gas giant, is the eighth planet from the Sun and is the most distant planet from the Sun in our Solar System. The atmosphere of Neptune is made of hydrogen and helium, with some methane. The methane absorbs red light, which makes the planet appear a lovely blue. High, thin clouds drift in the upper atmosphere.

Seen along its orbital path around the Sun...

Beyond Our Solar System

There are other galaxies and globular clusters,
a spherical collection of stars that orbits a galactic core as a satellite...

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. Its name "milky" is derived from its appearance as a dim glowing band arching across the night sky...

The Butterfly Cluster (also known as Messier 6 or NGC 6405) is a bright open star cluster of some 12 light-years across, located around 1,600 light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation of Scorpius (the Scorpion). Its name derives from the vague resemblance of its shape to a butterfly...

Digital Fulldome Movie

In Back To The Moon, a 40-minute Digital Fulldome Movie, teams around the world are competing for a chance to win the Google Lunar X Prize of $20 million, the largest incentivized prize in history In a renewed race to the moon. To qualify, teams must land a robotic spacecraft on the moon, navigate 300 metres over the lunar surface, and send videos, images and data back to Earth.

Tickets are priced at $14 for Digital Movies / Live Shows and $12 for IMAX movies. For more details, including the full list of movies and shows, check out the website for Science Centre Singapore's Omni-Theatre.

"This is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

- Neil Armstrong -

 

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Lai Wah Restaurant - Tucked Away Traditional Cantonese Cuisine

Bendemeer
North-East, Singapore
May 2015

In the corner of the quiet enclave called Bendemeer, just minutes away from the scenic Kallang River and the nearby new flats and spanking multi-storey carpark, lies a quiet restaurant tucked away in the throes of time.

External facade of restaurant with its white fluorescent tube lights...

The waitresses here are mostly in their 50s, if not 60s or even older. To them, all the temp staff are usually "Ah Boy", " Xiao Di", "Ah Girl" or "Xiao Mei". Service here is basic, unless you're a regular, that is when they will talk to you mostly non-stop in Cantonese.

Old-style interior with cushioned chairs and curtains with drapes...

The dishes here are traditional Cantonese. Quite a few dishes have since been replicated by other restaurants all over Singapore.

Lai Wah's traditional Roast Chicken recipe since 1963. 
For best taste, dip it in a little of the sea salt provided...

Who says these golden brown mantou can only be eaten with thick crab gravy? 
By themselves, they are freshly fragrant and crispy to the bite. One is definitely not enough...

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CharaExpo 2015 - Showcasing Top Anime, Manga & Cosplay Talent In Singapore

  

The inaugural CharaExpo 2015, the first major convention featuring Japanese content in Singapore, will be held on 20–21 June 2015 at Hall 7 at Singapore EXPO. Featuring leading names from the Japanese manga, anime, games and cosplay industries, luminaries include the anime creators, Akio Watanabe (Grisaia no Kajitsu, Bakemonogatari) and Masami Obari (Gravion, Cardfight!! Vanguard); voice artists such as Izumi Kitta (Milky Holmes, Cardfight!! Vanguard)
and Aimi (Cardfight!! Vanguard, Future Card BuddyFight); along with famed cosplayers Kaname, Sin Izumi and Tatsumi Inui and the all-stars of the New Japan Pro-Wrestling team.

Special guests at the media conference - Akio Watanabe, a Japanese animator, character designer and animation director going by the pseudonym Poyoyon Rock...

Ayaka Kitazawa, a Japanese singer from Saitama
who sang the ending theme song to the anime series Little Busters...

Voice artiste Aimi, who voices Kiri in Future Card Buddyfight and Suiko in Cardfight!! Vanguard...

CharaExpo 2015 will be debuting convention “firsts” including:
   

• Cos*Stage:  Participating cosplayers stand a chance to win an exclusive all-expenses-paid invitation to the Cosplay Collection Night at the Tokyo Game Show 2015. The Top 10 will be invited to a final selection round at Cos*Stage, on June 20 at CharaExpo 2015.
  
  
  
     
• Card Game Tournament: Bushiroad’s annual tournament series, the Bushiroad Spring Fest, will be held at the expo and will feature a 600-seat card game area for both new and veteran players.
      
• New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW): Catch NJPW stars Hiroshi Tanahasi, Jushin Thunder Liger, and Gedo in action at their very first exhibition matches on 20-21 June. 

The colourful characters from NJPW...

CharaExpo 2015’s exhibition floor will be split into three exciting zones:
   

• The Exhibition Zone will feature popular series titles and exclusive merchandise from Bushiroad Inc., Good Smile Company, Aniplex Inc., VisualArts, Kotobukiya and Banpresto.
     
• The Creator Zone will feature noted anime and manga character and series’ artists and the Entertainment zone where visitors can browse through the latest titles in anime.  “Creators’ Corner”, dedicated to both individual artists and artist groups or circles to showcase, feature and sell their work, will also feature work from Collateral Damage Studios, Daiyaku and Lion Geeks.
    
• The Entertainment Zone will feature performances from rising pop singers such as Mashiro Ayano and Ayaka Kitazawa.  

A final picture with the guests from Japan...

For more information, visit chara-expo.com/2015/.

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Avondale Grammar School - Where Positive Education Thrives

Avondale Grammar School
Phoenix Park
Central, Singapore
May 2015

Merlion Wayfarer was recently at Avondale Grammar School as part of the HeritageFest's event titled Avondale Grammar School: From Past to Present at Phoenix Park. The guided tour saw the doors of the former headquarters of the British Military and Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs at Tanglin Road opened to the public for the first time.

Offered a guided tour of an international school for the first time, Merlion Wayfarer was very impressed by the innovative educational curriculum.

Motor Skills

This handcrafted phoenix represented the original naming of Phoenix Park.
Made by 3 to 4-year-old preschoolers, the collage was formed with different-coloured rice
to signify the member countries in the Rice Talks...

What better way to teach preschoolers about shapes than to use food?

In this simple exercise, students cut out simple shapes and pasted them onto a paper plate pizza.

Besides training their motor skills,
they also learn about aesthetics, shapes and numbers at the same time.

Presentation Skills

Boys from Year 3 with their cute little mustaches role play a British Major, a Colonel and a General discussing the formation of SEATO. Despite their young age, they are able to project their voices well with clear articulation...

Cultural Understanding

In one of the Level 1 classrooms, one's eye is naturally drawn to this picture board.

"Where In The World Do You Read?" was its title.

People from all over the world are featured doing just one thing - reading. 

The School has children from over 20 nationalities. To teach them about the values for global harmony, they create an interlinked chain with coloured paper and handwritten values...

Sensual Awareness

In learning about materials, students are taught to use their 5 senses.

A pair of scissors, an example of "metal",

can be "shiny" (visual), "sharp" (kinesthetic), and can "cut things" (action)...

Language & Grammar

These were other posters found in the classrooms

How do you tell time... Using an analogue clock is very different from using a digital timepiece.

Do you know what time is a "quarter past seven"?

Without using a thesaurus, how many words and phrases can you come up with to mean "addition"?

Using animals, what does it mean to "slide" and to "flip"?

Stressing the importance of punctuation...

If you find yourself always using the same word...

Sentences are composed of these parts - adjectives, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, nouns...

Current Affairs

Much is built into the curriculum so that the students, most of who are temporary residents of Singapore, learn more about their host country and grow to appreciate their time spent here.

How much do the students know about Singapore leaders?

Quite a lot - as shown from this running slide show on Lee Kuan and profiles of prominent Singapore politicians pasted on the doors of key rooms in the school, such as this one of Professor Jayakumar at door to the music room.

Visual cues like these provide reminders for the assimilation of knowledge.

In this map by Year 5s, the students researched the history of the local area surrounding Phoenix Park. Using this information, they wrote newspaper reports about the interesting facts uncovered...

 

With old photographs of Orchard Road, students drew what they thought Orchard Road was like in the past...

In the above project, the Year 5s learnt about research skills, writing techniques, article formatting, while at the same time, practiced their sketching and understanding of perspective.

Values

Colour-coding to inculcate correct classroom behaviour...

How do you contribute to a team/community/family? Are you a hog that delays everyone due to your own agenda? A log that is slow to move and holding everyone up? A cog that does the work? Or...

Hobbies

Year 4 students are provided with a camera to photograph the architecture of Phoenix Park. In this activity, in addition to camera angles, they learn about organic and geometric shapes so that they can be creatively incorporated into their photographs.

A QR code is included below every framed photo with a description of it...

Appreciation of art with a poster of art pieces in the Musee du Louvre in Paris...

Environment

Of course, the environment matters too. Quality furniture is a must for students in their growing years.

An ergonomic classroom chair...

Positive Education is taught at Avondale Grammar School through the Bounce Back programme created by Dr Toni Noble and Helen McGrath. Positive Education is exactly as its name suggests: a pastoral learning programme that teaches children the skills and attitudes they need to promote resilience and guide them along the pathway of well-being. In school, students not only experience a positive school culture and environment, they are also taught skills in how to enhance their well-being, deal with life’s challenges, live a life of meaning and purpose, strengthen their relationships with others and strive for their dreams. Positive education lessons and activities emphasize the benefits of a growing and optimistic mind and a grateful heart. The programme also prepares children for life’s challenges by strengthening their problem-solving skills and resilience. Such lessons set students up for lifelong learning and flourishing beyond the school gates. 

Celebrating life in colours - Snapshots of the students in school activities...

|  "HeritageFest - Phoenix Park"  |

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