The Barometer Week 1 Summer

BAROMETER THE

WETHERBY SENIOR SCHOOL WEEKLY APRIL 22nd 2019 | WEEK 1

THIS WEEK...

BOYS TAKE OVER THE BAROMETER!

FROM THE HEADMASTER

Dear Parents, We are only a few days in to the Summer Term and it has been an interesting start. As you will know from Mr Lawrence’s emails, we were forced to move out of the Bulstrode Street site on Thursday morning.

After a few hours of drilling outside my office, I was surprised by a sudden cessation of the noise and turned round to see a geyser as a water pipe was hit but, more worryingly, a gas leak was also then discovered. I am very grateful for the way everyone adapted so quickly to the situation, from the catering team who had to cater for everyone in Hannah House at short notice, to the teaching staff who adapted lesson plans and came up with new ones when they realised they couldn’t be in the science labs or art rooms, to Mr Lawrence for re-rooming many of the afternoon lessons and, of course, to the boys who approached it with their customary good humour.

The term also starts with a fantastic community event on Friday evening. At ‘Havana Nights’ earlier in the year, two parents generously bought the lots to play the staff at netball and football. Those two matches are going back to back on Friday evening at Trailfinders. I have been drafted into the parents’ netball team and greatly enjoyed being put through my paces by some of the girls at Godolphin and Latymer with some dads and other non-netball playing teachers on Wednesday night. They described the game we were playing as a cross between netball, basketball and rugby so I don’t hold out much hope for the big match. I do know though that it will be a great community event and the staff and I are looking forward to it.

I hope you enjoy this week’s Barometer as all the articles are written by the boys and it shows the range of interests that they have. Politics, art, science

and Greek Easter are all included in the pieces the boys produced over the two week break. I hope you enjoy their efforts.

There is a great deal to pack into this compact nine and half week term. Your son should have brought a term diary home for you, but if not one is available on the website (https:// www.wetherbysenior.co.uk/ news-2/calendar/). You should also have received a letter from me today with the key dates included.

Best wishes,

WEEK A MONDAY

WEEKLY DIARY 29.04.19

GCSE French Orals (Year 11), Hannah House Years 11 & 12 LAMDA Exams (each lasting one hour) LAMDA Recital (Juniors) 17:30

TUESDAY

30.04.19 Tennis U15 WSS vs UCS (A) 14:30

WEDNESDAY

01.05.19 Tennis U12/13 WSS vs UCS (H) 14:30

THURSDAY

02.05.19

Years 7 & 8 LAMDA Exams (each lasting 30 minutes) GCSE Art & Graphic Design Exam (Day 1), Art Department Visitor Morning 10:40-11:50 Cricket U14/15 WSS vs Westminster (H) 14:30 Tennis U14 WSS vs UCS (A) 14:30

FRIDAY

03.05.19

SATURDAY

04.05.19

SUNDAY

06.05.19

08:30-14:30

Years 9 & 10 LAMDA Exams (each lasting 45 minutes) GCSE Art & Graphic Design Exam (Day 2), Art Department 08:30-12:30 Friday Lunchtime Clubs Programme 13:40-14:25 Year Group Assemblies 15:15-15:45 Years 7 & 8 (HH Dining Room), Year 9 (Drama Studio), Year 10 (HS Methodist Church), Year 11 (HH Hall), Year 12 (HH Music Room) GCSE PE Boys Table Tennis, Drama Studio !6:00-17:00

WETHERBY SENIOR SCHOOL WATER BOTTLE Help reduce our school’s plastic consumption by using this personalised Active Bottle, emblazoned with the Wetherby Senior School logo and your own name. Made from highly durable materials, your Active Bottle is easy to open and close, won’t leak and will keep your drinks hot or cold throughout the school day.

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Mr Sullivan writes...

On 4th May 2019 I am competing in the Spartan South East Super Race in Kent to raise money for CALM. Being a volunteer for CALM and helping young adults is a massive passion of mine. Listening and communicating is the most important factor!

I’m raising awareness and money throughout this year by competing in many half marathons and memorial rugby matches. It would be great if you could donate and share my page so I can raise as much as possible to help support the charity. If you would like to find out more about CALM please visit www.thecalmzone.net https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/james-sullivan21

IMPORTANT NOTICES

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

Main: Grilled chicken breast with tarragon and mushroom cream sauce

Main: Spaghetti Bolognese

Main: Beef rice bowls

Meat Free: Summer vegetable casserole To Go With: Creamed polenta, steamed carrot rounds, herbed dumplings Dessert: Strawberry mousse

Meat Free: Falafel pittas With tzatziki and pickled cabbage To Go With: Herbed couscous, carrots and peas, onion bhaji Dessert: Banana chocolate custard

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

Main: Coastal fish pie

Main: Beef or chicken burgers

Meat Free: Tomato, mozzarella, basil, pasta bake

Meat Free: Beetroot and feta burgers

To Go With: Ratatouille tian, French beans, cauliflower and broccoli florets Dessert: Raspberry mirror

To Go With: String potato fries, burger garnish, corn on the cob, Boston baked beans, burger buns

Meat Free: Vegetable and edamame bean noodle stir-fry To Go With: Vegetable nuggets, miso aubergine, steamed pak choi Dessert: Carrot cake

EVERY DAY

Homemade Bread Freshly made yogurt pots Fresh Fruit

Dessert: Chocolate sweet potato brownie

MENU

GREEK EASTER Vangelis F, Year 7 writes...

During Easter time in Greece we don’t hunt for eggs nor do we have a mythical bunny who delivers said eggs. I personally think we have something so much more enjoyable that adults can have fun with too.

So, let me share with you our traditions.

Greek Easter: The Saturday On the Saturday night before Easter Sunday everyone goes to the streets with a candle and we wait there until the holy light is released to one person.

This is then passed down to everyone else in the area. This is usually done near a church so that you can carry the flame into it and then attend a church service. A traditional soup made of sheep and lamb innards is made to break the fast that many people have been on.

Greek Easter: The Sunday In the morning of the Sunday all the children in their separate households must make hard boiled eggs that have been soaked in vinegar and red food colouring. Once guests start arriving, they bring small gifts such as Easter themed chocolates.

On Sunday at noon we all get together and eat a traditional lunch of lamb, spanakopita (spinach and feta pie with

puff pastry) potatoes and sweet bread called tsoureki. We all stay at the table and the eggs that were mentioned earlier are brought to the table. This is where the main part of Easter begins. Everyone takes an egg and chooses a person. This is your first opponent. You will hold your eggs one on top one below. The person on top sand ays “christos anesti” and the other says “alithos anesti” then the person on top brings their egg downwards and whoevers egg cracks is the loser. The winner goes on like this until there is only one person left.

A common cheat is a wooden egg painted red or a metal one if you want to reuse it. For dinner you can eat anything.

Greek Easter: The Monday On Monday you are just able to relax and finish the leftover chocolate and food from the day before without having to worry about homework. You can also go out with friends.

You can do anything you want on this day. Everything is closed so even adults can have a well-earned day of relaxation day.

CLIMATE CHANGE MARCH Pip E, Year 12 writes...

On Friday 12th April I joined the climate change march with thousands of other young students to protest against the government’s lack of acknowledgement of the climate change issues. This took place in one of the busiest streets in central London, Oxford Street. I followed the group past Downing Street and Parliament Square to portray our sentiment of the importance of climate change to the Prime Minister and House of Commons. Climate

change is a growing problem in our society and the world due to the increase in burning fossil fuels. Commencing from the industrial revolution in the 1850s there has been an increase in the production of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Climate change has a number of impacts on our planet including Global Warming.

This causes sea levels to rise from the ice caps melting, which could potentially cause major flooding around the world and also affect wildlife specifically in Antarctica. I

went to this climate change march with Nicholas M and as A level Geography students we were very passionate about this protest, which took place in this holiday. The march finished at Oxford Circus where we all sat down in the middle of the road to show to everyone that this will carry on until action is taken by the government. I believe these marches will continue throughout 2019 on the climate change issue because it is our future that we are trying to save.

BLACK HOLES

Oliver Lind, Year 12 writes...

You may have seen in the news over the Easter holidays this image. The above is the first photo ever taken of a black hole, an event that sent shockwaves and awes across the science community. The photo itself testifying to Einstein's monumental legacy and being a grand example of the power of human ingenuity.

To give a perspective of how hard it was to capture this image, would be the same as placing an orange on the surface of the moon and trying to take a picture of it from Earth - pretty amazing, right!

In light of this pivotal event and the fact that during the Spring Term, Rahul, Kieran, Manuel and I, being the keen Wetherby physicists that we are, went to a lecture on black holes at Imperial College held

by Astronomer Chris Impey. I thought it would be interesting to talk about the extraordinary phenomenon of a black hole.

So what is a black hole? A black hole is a region of space with extremely strong

gravity where nothing can escape its gravitational pull, not even light, hence giving it its black nature. It must be noted though, that a black hole is not exactly a hole, it is a sphere, and its super dense nature gives its a very strong gravitational pull surrounding it. The use of the term ‘hole’ in this case, being a suitable descriptor of its characteristics - sucking up all matter around it and not letting it out. Black holes, though, need certain circumstances to form. This entails the collapse of a star, a very large star called a supernova, which when massive enough (more than 10 times the mass of the sun) forms a black hole under the high pressure of its collapse, otherwise if not massive enough it forms a neutron star. This happens when an explosion of a supernova (when collasping) is so powerful that it causes the high mass at the centre of the star to compress so much that it forms a black hole.

Black holes can also be formed sometimes by the combination of two neutron stars which together cause the given mass of both stars to surpass the Scharwazizchilds radius - a radius which is associated with all masses and determines the radius of the mass to become a black hole with the required density. For the sun, the Scharwazizchilds radius is about 3km which is 0.0004% of its actual radius. This very small radius compared to the mass of matter makes a black hole so incredibly dense, in turn, meaning the gravity surrounding the hole is extremely strong. Density, in the case of stellar black holes (medium-sized ones), is equivalent to 20 solar masses (20 times the mass of the sun) fitting into a ball with a diameter of about 10 miles or correspondingly compressing the earth down to about the size of a golf ball. This high concentration of matter means space-time is very significantly warped as shown in the illustration below.

Space-time here is referring to a mathematical model used by physicists which models concepts of time and threedimensional space to be regarded as a four-dimensional continuum. Imagine a rubber sheet to represent space, the mass will cause it to bend and stretch. The more mass concentrated on a single point the more it stretches.

Following this model, we see that due to the black holes very high density (large mass and small volume) it significantly bends space-time. The large bend and warp in space-time as shown illustrates the strong force of gravity associated with a black hole. Here you can picture rolling a marble across a rubber sheet, for the sun the ball (relative to itself) would roll at a slower velocity to the bottom point than for a black hole due to the black hole bending spacetime more giving the the marble a steeper gradient to travel down. This illustrates why gravity is so much stronger for a black hole.

Their super-strong force of gravity would mean that if you ever were in the unfortunate circumstance of falling into a black hole, you would be stretch by so much you will turn into a string of spaghetti.

This is because the gravity at your feet (assuming you are entering the black hole feet first) is a lot higher than the gravity at your head, so the difference in the forces would cause you to stretch. Another thing that would happen is that time would slow down significantly under the strong

force of gravid as described

by Einstein's laws of General Relativity. Gravity warping space-time would stretch time, meaning that to a hypothetical observer of your fall, it would take a very long time to watch you fall a small distance whereas it would be near instantaneously for you. Again this is hypothetical due to the fact that it is impossible to see into black holes!

Hawking, have a temperature. Therefore over incredibly long periods of time, they evaporate, releasing their energy out into the universe. This means that eventually, a black hole will disappear and questioning what happens to the information which entered it in the first place. This is known as the information paradox and I feel it’s this mysterious nature combined with its immense size and power that makes black holes so beautifully interesting and complex.

To finish, I leave you with a quote by Stephen Hawking which comes as a solution to the information paradox whereby it is theorised that perhaps information within black holes is stored by soft particles (lowenergy versions of the kinds of particles that exist in zero-energy empty space) which can later be returned out of the black hole by a mechanism that he was exploring:

All our information about black holes comes from observing behaviours of matter surrounding the black area as due to the black hole extreme gravity nothing can escape, therefore nothing can be received from within its event horizon - around where the blackness of the hole begins. However, black holes, as discovered by Stephen

“Black holes ain't as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole, both to the outside and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up. There's a way out.�

THE DISNEY CORPORATION Lachlan W, Year 12 writes...

As of the March 20th 2019, Disney owns 27% of the film industry. March 20th was the day that Disney bought Fox’s film and television studios for $71.3 billion. Disney’s reach as a film studio is now much larger than many people may expect as they now own properties very far from the pristine, clean, child focused entertainment they originally rose to fame with. For example Disney now own MARVEL, Avatar, The Pirates of The Caribbean, Star Wars, The Simpsons, Family Guy, National Geographic and Indiana Jones. Along with collecting IPs and studios Disney has been buying stakes in TV networks, and as of 2019 they own ABC Television Group in its entirety and 50% of most of its subsidiaries.

Disney also own 80% of ESPN and now 60% of Hulu.

For a long time now, Disney has adopted a strategy of buying their competition but not interfering with their individual on-goings.

Because Disney is now an IP collector more than anything else Disney outsources production of merchandising charging for use of its IP and collecting a percentage of sales. However, Disney does not do this for its theme parks and resorts (another industry in which they are the largest firm).

It is often said that Walt Disney was an average animator but an astounding businessman and it is hard to argue against that. The story that best exemplifies this is Disney’s claims about his technical breakthroughs in the field. Mickey Mouse is Disney’s most iconic creation and Disney would have you believe that he was the first cartoon character to talk, however, Max Fleisher managed to create that

breakthrough four years earlier with a character aptly named “Talkie”. It was Disney’s business skills that let him run Fleisher’s studio out of business, leaving them unable to dispute Disney’s claims. Whatever people’s view on “The Walt Disney Corporation” they created thirteen of the top twenty highest grossing films of the past nine years and nine of those top ten.

GRAPHIC DESIGN IN INDUSTRY! Leo M, Year 10 writes...

I have really enjoyed Graphic Design since I started doing it in September. Since then I have designed a sports brand and designed a book cover for “The Hunger Games”.

Each of these projects has taken me about a term to do and my next project will be to design a chocolate box.

Over the Easter break I did an internship at my mother’s law firm. She has a forum coming up at the end of May and she asked me to create a poster to help publicise her company. This year she is

going to host the forum and receive a number of awards.

This means that she will have to be able to present her company in the best possible way. As I have been studying Graphic Design as one of my GCSE subjects, I suggested that I give it a try, and she willingly accepted!

At first it was difficult to think of ideas but then I decided to start by changing the colours of her logo and instantly, ideas began to flow into my head. Initially, the poster was meant to be in pink and white because they are the official logo colours

of her company but I thought that black and pink would look much more appealing and interesting, so I decided to develop my ideas with those colours. It took me about a week to create the poster and I was quite happy with how it turned out. I sent it to my mother and she was very pleased with it.

The marketing section of her company also looked at what I had made and together, they decided to use my poster as the official poster for her forum.

THE PRICE Sean M, Year 12 writes...

I saw ‘The Price’ at the Wyndham Theatre on the 23rd February; the play was written

by Arthur Miller and was first performed on Broadway in 1968. The drama is set in a soon to be demolished house in New York City, in the aftermath of the Economic Depression in the 1930s. The themes of the play, deceit, family, wealth, guilt, love, and dreams all conjure up to create an excellent, thoughtprovoking, and moving play.

The Price involves two brothers, Victor and Walter, and focuses on the distribution of their dead parents’ belongings. The secondhand furniture broker, Solomon, has offered a thousand dollars for these belongings, and Victor has reached a tentative agreement with him, although his wife and brother

both urge him to hold out for three times the amount offered.

The brothers’ father, who had been reasonably prosperous, suffered the fate of many during the Great Depression of the 1930’s and was reduced to living at barely subsistence level.

Both brothers were focused on becoming surgeons, however, due to the cost of university and the old age of their father, Victor stayed with his father, whilst Walter pursued his job.

Victor was always loyal to his father, even though his wife, Esther, wished that he might be slightly less loyal and might do something that would enable the two of them to lead a more comfortable existence. Victor, who is scrupulously honest, could certainly use the money from the sale of his father’s assets, but he insists that the proceeds be shared equally with Walter, who has little need for them. As the play progresses, the deeper stories of the

brothers relationship with each other and also with their dad slowly unravel. The audience sees the evil effect that money can possess on a family, due to the jealousy and frustration of both characters.

Whilst the opening of the play was slow, as soon as Gregory Solomon (played by David Suchet) appeared the laughs and comedy started to flow.

Suchet’s composed and relaxed nature on stage expertly contrasted with the manner of the cold, and morally complacent Walter- who is played by Adrian Lukis. The moments of brilliant comedy, juxtaposed with moments of tense familial conflict, gel together to produce a truly fantastic play. Tables, chairs, and various pieces of furniture are incredibly sprawled across the stage, revealing the chaos in the dilapidated attic of the family.

VAN GOGH AT TATE BRITAIN Stefano A, Year 10 writes...

This half term, I went to TATE’s art exhibition on Vincent van Gogh (185390). I was very intrigued by his various painting techniques which he used to create different effects.

For example, he used the technique called impasto which is where the paint is laid so thickly that the texture of the brush strokes is visible. This art exhibition was focused on what the artist took inspiration from in Britain when he lived there for several years when he was young; however, it also showed how more contemporary artists like Francis Bacon and David Bomberg took inspiration from him. Therefore, in every room, there were a few of van Gogh’s paintings and the rest were artworks by other artists who have all been inspired by him.

Additionally, the exhibition helped me understand more about that period in art history and movement which I wanted to incorporate in my Art GCSE.

DON MCCULLIN AT TATE BRITAIN Tom Z, Year 12 writes...

Don McCullin is a worldfamous photographer, best known for his harrowing photographs of the atrocities and horrors of Vietnam. Yet, after having seen his exhibition at the Tate Britain, it’s clear that the most impactful of his hundreds of photographs are from the conflicts forgotten or underrepresented in the shadow of Vietnam.

within the Barometer with children being the greatest victims of the conflict. It was these images from McCullin that raised awareness of the

circumstances that innocent people were in, helping to encourage other countries to provide aid for the people of Biafra.

Some of the most horrifying images came from the violent conflict between Greek and Turkish Cypriots lasting from 1955 to 1964.

This is one of the few photographs that clearly show, not the brutality of the war, but the immense emotional toll that it had on the people of Cyprus and the unique angle that McCullin adopted in his photography which would be echoed in his later assignments in other warzones.

Worse still was the Biafran War, a conflict which I had heard of, but nothing more. Yet in the three-year war around 4.5 million civilians were displaced and 2 million died of famine. The photographs of the conflict were all too upsetting to include

Shell-shocked US Marine, The Battle of Hue 1968, Don McCullin

Furthermore, the countless pictures of the Troubles in Northern Ireland were a stark reminder that, especially with the recent murder of a Northern Ireland journalist in Londonderry by the New Irish Republican Army, the scars of the conflict still exist today.

And whilst the casualties of the war aren’t even comparable to conflicts like the Biafran War, the thirty-year dispute had devastating social repercussions which, as said, haven’t faded to this day.

All in all, I must urge any of you with an interest in the history of the conflicts of the last 50 years who can stomach the brutality of what transpired to see the exhibition before it ends in just over a week’s time.

Cyprus 1964, Don McCullin

Northern Ireland, Londonderry 1971, Don McCullin

http://www.wetherbysenior.co.uk