The Thing We Use Everyday - 9/11/2018, Friday

Mr. Baker showing us how much oil they
usually got when drilling.

    Energy is what we use everyday. We need it to move. We need it to live life. Without energy, life would be a waste of time.  It has unlimited possibilities. On Friday, we had Mr. Andy Baker come to our school to teach us some things about energy. He brought along lots of exciting activities. He was able to cover lots of things. Mr. Andy is a man who works at Schlumberger as an engineer. At first, he talked to us about drilling oil and how they do it. He said that they would make a really big sound, such as dynamite exploding or a machine that produced big sounds. When sound bounces off oil, it makes a different sound than sound bouncing off solid things. When a kid asked if they had to go under 2 layers of water to get to the oil - if they were drilling off shore - , he explained it to us with a very good experiment. Although I already knew that oil floats on water, he told the kid to fill a jar with water. After filling the jar with water, he told the kid to put oil in it. He also asked the kid to put honey in, and the honey sunk, while the oil floated. If you weren't able to find the oil that they thought was where they drilled, you were basically bankrupt. He told us that it took millions of dollars to drill off shore, while it took thousands of dollars to drill on shore. I also learned that when drilling for oil, they usually only got 25% of oil. I wondered how they were able to make profit even though the cost of drilling for oil was so high and the amount of oil they got was so little. He also came up with a really fun experiment to show us how much oil they would get. He asked a boy to go up to the front, and the boy was supposed to use a thing (I forgot what it was called) to poke a bottle. After poking the bottle, water burst out of the bottle and landed on the crowd. Mr. Andy used his hand to block the water and let the water fall into a bowl. He then poured all the water into a beaker to measure the amount of water they got. There was 250ml of water in the bowl, but we started out with about 1 liter of water. In the end of the presentation, he left us with stickers and a cake (which I can't eat, like always - sadly). I was able to learn a lot from him, and thought that he gave a great presentation. At the end of the day, we started to poke holes through the cake, trying to find the gummy bears that were in the cake (which was supposed to be "oil"). The day ended with lots of laughter as we walked out of the class.