Year 8 geography, stage by stage

What to do

1. Put the tea towel on a table and stand the baking tray on it: this is your shake table.
2. Build a tower ten blocks high with a base one block wide. Measure its height.
3. Slide the tray sharply side to side ten times at a steady speed, and record whether the tower fell.
4. Rebuild to the same height with a base two blocks wide, then three, and repeat the same shaking each time.
5. Do three runs for each base width and record how many collapsed.

What to do

1. Prop one end of the tray on the book so it sits at a gentle, fixed slope.
2. Pour one tablespoon of water at the top and time how long it takes to reach the bottom. Measure how far it spread sideways.
3. Wipe the tray, then repeat with oil, then with syrup, using exactly one tablespoon each time.
4. Repeat each liquid twice more and work out the mean time and mean spread.

What to do

1. Stand the jar in an open spot away from walls and trees, and put the thermometer in shade at the same height each day.
2. At the same time every day, record the temperature, the rainfall in millimetres, the wind direction and the cloud cover in eighths.
3. Empty the rain gauge after every reading.
4. After seven days, draw a climate-style graph: bars for rainfall and a line for temperature on the same axes.
5. Write two sentences comparing your week with the usual average for the month where you live.

What to do

1. Choose six spots: a sunny wall, a shaded wall, open grass, under a tree, a paved area and a sheltered corner.
2. Mark all six on your sketch map.
3. At each spot, hold the thermometer at waist height, wait two minutes for the reading to settle, then record it.
4. Walk the same route again an hour later, and a third time in the afternoon.
5. Shade your map by temperature to make a simple choropleth of your own microclimates.

What to do

1. Push the open tube about 3 cm into a patch of grass so no water can escape at the sides.
2. Pour in 500 ml of water and start the timer.
3. Record how long it takes for the water to disappear, or the depth left after five minutes.
4. Repeat on bare soil, on compacted soil you have trodden on twenty times, and on a paved slab with a tray to catch the run-off.
5. Do each surface three times and work out a mean infiltration time.

What to do

1. Weigh or measure your six fragments and sketch their shape.
2. Put three in the jar with 200 ml of water. Keep the other three dry and untouched as your control.
3. Shake steadily for one minute, then drain, dry, re-measure and sketch again.
4. Repeat for two, four and eight minutes of total shaking, measuring after each stage.
5. Plot total shaking time against mass, and describe the shape change in words.

What to do

1. Draw a tally sheet with categories: housing, shops, services, green space, industry, transport and empty or derelict.
2. Walk one side of a chosen street with an adult, recording every building or plot in one category only.
3. Walk the other side back and finish the tally.
4. At two fixed points, count how many people pass in five minutes, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon.
5. Colour your map by category and write a paragraph on which land use dominates and why.

What to do

1. Read the country of origin on every item you can find, and list them in a table.
2. Mark each country on your world map and join it to the UK with a straight line.
3. Use an online map's distance tool, or a scale bar, to estimate each distance in kilometres.
4. Group the items by continent and work out what share came from beyond Europe.
5. Write two sentences on why one item travels so far: climate, growing season, cost of labour or all three.

What to do

1. Pick two points about 4 km apart and write down each six-figure grid reference.
2. Lay the paper strip between them and tick every contour line it crosses, labelling the height.
3. Transfer the ticks onto squared paper: distance along the bottom, height up the side.
4. Join the points to draw your cross-section, and mark on any river, road or settlement it crosses.
5. Describe the relief in geographical language: steep, gentle, valley, ridge, plateau.

What to do

1. Open a free mapping site and centre it on your postcode. Note the scale bar.
2. Switch between the map layer, the satellite layer and a terrain layer, and write down one thing each layer shows that the others hide.
3. Use the scale bar to draw a circle roughly 800 m across your home: about a ten-minute walk.
4. Count parks, playing fields and accessible woodland inside the circle, then repeat for a second area a few kilometres away.
5. Present both counts in a table and write a conclusion with evidence from your map.