Creative skills flow for World Water Day

Gold Coast prep, primary and secondary students are tapping into their creative skills in the lead up to World Water Day (March 22).

Council’s Water Management Committee Chair, Councillor Daphne McDonald said the city’s students had been asked to paint, draw and collage ‘the value of a sustainable water future’.

“This inaugural art competition coincides with World Water Day and will raise awareness of our precious water resources and how we should use them wisely,” she said.

“Gold Coast Water is asking students to put their creative skills to the test by entering the World Water Day School Art Competition.

“The exciting competition forms part of the 'Make your water mark!' Watersaver Education Program, which aims to engage students and the school community on water sustainability issues and conservation practices.

“Water conservation continues to be a priority in our daily lives and I encourage students to make their water mark and encourage others to do the same.”

Gear

A gear is a wheel with teeth around its circumference, the purpose of the teeth being to mesh with similar teeth on another mechanical device possibly another gear wheel so that force can be transmitted between the two strategies in a direction tangential to their surfaces. A non-toothed wheel can transmit some tangential force but will slip if the force is large; teeth put off slippage and permit the transmission of large forces.

A gear can mesh with any device having teeth friendly with the gear's teeth. Such devices include racks and other non-rotating policy; however, the most common condition is for a gear to be in mesh with another gear. In this case revolution of one of the gears necessarily causes the other gear to rotate. In this way, rotational motion can be transferred from one position to another. While gears are sometimes used simply for this reason to transmit rotation to another shaft perhaps their most significant feature is that, if the gears are of asymmetrical sizes, a mechanical advantage is also achieved, so that the rotational speed, and torque, of the second gear are dissimilar from that of the first. In this way, gears provide a means of increasing or decreasing a turning speed, or a torque.

Wilderness

Wilderness is generally defined as a natural environment on Earth that has not been directly modified by human activity. Ecologists consider wilderness areas to be an integral part of the planet's self-sustaining natural ecosystem.

The word, wilderness, derives from the notion of wildness; in other words that which is not controllable by humans. The word's etymology is from the Old English wilderness, which in turn derives from wilder meaning wild beast (wild + deor = beast, deer). From this point of view, it is the wildness of a place that makes it a wilderness. The mere presence or activity of people does not disqualify an area from being wilderness. Many ecosystems that are, or have been, inhabited or influenced by activities of people may still be considered wild. This way of looking at wilderness includes areas within which natural processes operate without very noticeable human interference.

Looked at through the lens of the visual arts, nature and wildness have been important subjects in various epochs of world history. An early tradition of landscape art occurred in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The tradition of representing nature as it is became one of the aims of Chinese painting and was a significant influence in Asian art. Artists learned to depict mountains and rivers from the perspective of nature as a whole and on the basis of their understanding of the laws of nature … as if seen through the eyes of a bird. In the 13th century, Shih Erh Chi listed scenes lacking any places made inaccessible by nature, as one of the 12 things to avoid in painting.

Hockey

Hockey is any of a family of sports in which two teams struggle by trying to maneuver a ball, or a hard, surrounding disc called a puck, into the opponent's net or goal, using a hockey stick. Field hockey is played on nettle, natural grass, sand-based or water-based artificial turfs, with a small, hard ball. The game is popular among both males and females in many countries of the world, mostly in Europe, India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and South Asia. In most countries, the game is played between single-sex sides, even though it can be played by mixed-sex sides. In the United States and Canada it is played mostly by women.

Ball hockey is played in a gym using sticks and a ball, often a tennis ball with the hair removed.
There are early representations and reports of hockey-type games being played on ice in the Netherlands, and reports from Canada from the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the modern game was initially planned by students at McGill University, Montreal in 1875 who, by two years later, codified the first set of ice hockey rules and organized the first teams.

Computers

Computers take numerous physical forms. The first devices that resemble modern computers date to the mid-20th century, although the computer concept and various machines similar to computers existed prior. Early electronic computers were the size of a large room, consuming as much power as several hundred modern personal computers. Modern computers are based on comparatively tiny integrated circuits and are millions to billions of times more capable while occupying a fraction of the space. Today, simple computers may be made small enough to fit into a wrist watch and be powered from a watch battery. Personal computers in various forms are icons of the information age and are what most people think of as "a computer". However, the most common form of computer in use today is by far the embedded computer. Embedded computers are small, simple devices that are often used to control other devices-for example, they may be found in machines ranging from fighter aircraft to industrial robots, digital cameras, and even children's toys.

The ability to store and execute lists of instructions called programs makes computers extremely versatile and distinguishes them from calculators. The Church-Turing thesis is a mathematical statement of this versatility: Any computer with a certain minimum capability is, in principle, capable of performing the same tasks that any other computer can perform. Therefore, computers with capability and complexity ranging from that of a personal digital assistant to a supercomputer are all able to perform the same computational tasks given enough time and storage capacity.

Hobbies

A hobby-horse was a wood or wickerwork toy made to be ride just like the actual hobby. From this game the appearance to ride one's hobby-horse, meaning to follow a favourite pastime, and in turn, hobby in the modern sense of recreation. Hobbies are practised for interest and satisfaction, rather than financial reward. Examples include collecting, creative and artistic pursuits, building, tinkering, sports and adult education. Engaging in a hobby can lead to acquiring significant skill, knowledge, and experience.

However, personal realization is the aim. What are hobbies for some people are professions for others, a game tester may enjoy cooking as a hobby, while a qualified cheif might enjoy playing computer games. Generally speaking, the person who does something for fun, not remuneration, is called an recreational as distinct from a professional. An important determinant of what is considered a hobby, as individual from a profession is probably.

Birds

Many species of bird undertake long distance annual migrations, and many more perform shorter irregular movements. Birds are social and communicate using visual signals and through calls and song, and participate in social behaviors including cooperative hunting, cooperative breeding, flocking and mobbing of predators. Birds are primarily socially monogamous, with engagement in extra-pair copulations being common in some species-other species have polygamous or polyandrous breeding systems. Eggs are regularly laid in a nest and incubated and most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching.

Birds are economically important to humans: many are important sources of food, acquired either through hunting or farming, and they provide other products. Some species, particularly songbirds and parrots, are popular as pets. Birds figure prominently in all aspects of human culture from religion to poetry and popular music. About 120-130 species have become extinct as a result of human activity since 1600, and hundreds more before this. Currently around 1,200 species of birds are threatened with extinction by human activities and efforts are underway to protect them.