Mock Election Held on Campus
On Monday May 2nd Canadians headed to the polls for a Federal election and Ridleians did the same in a mock election held on campus. Over the past few weeks Mr. Filion and Mr. McNiven’s Grade 9 Civics classes have been campaigning much like the real party leaders have been all over Canada. Each Grade 9 Civics class was assigned a party (Conservative, Liberal, Green or NDP) and had to follow the platform of that party. They have been putting up posters, making Facebook groups and producing videos to convince their fellow students that they are the party to vote for. On the Friday before the election the party leaders from each classroom presented their final speech in the dining hall and Monday the students voted!
Check out one of the videos made by the Ridley Green Party:
The Ridley Liberal Facebook Group:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Liberal-Party-of-Ridley-College/196088367095455?sk=wall
The Ridley NDP Facebook Group:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/NDP-Ridley-College/212613475418495?sk=wall
Strawberry DNA Isolation – Grade 12 Biology:
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the material that transfers genetic characteristics in humans, animals and almost all other living organisms, including fruits and vegetables. Ripe strawberries are an excellent source for extracting DNA because they are easy to pulverize, which breaks the cells of the strawberries apart. The Grade 12 AP Biology students learned about this first-hand on Tuesday.
Ridley VEX Robotics Team Wins Three Trophies
The Ridley VEX Robotics Team was at it again this weekend at Governor Simcoe School for the Southern Ontario VEX Robotics Tournament. The team took two robotics teams to Governor Simcoe to do battle with 58 other teams from the region and the GTA.
Our first match of the day was a disaster. Team 1509R, piloted by driver Tyler Porter and co-driver Enoch Ho and coach McCambly had a drive shaft pop free in their first match and wound up tipping over, twitching helplessly on the ground. It was an ugly beginning. After that, however, Tyler drove the machine with ever increasing skill, winning his next 5 matches for a preliminary record of 5-1.
Taylor Petrick drove our other machine, 1509B, with advisor Steve Docherty and coach Reimer finishing with a win against the best opponents on the last preliminary match to post a 5 win, 1 tie record. Taylor was also able to lay down superb skills challenge scores, scoring an incredible 113 points, 4 off the world record! (out of thousands of matches worldwide).
Our scouting team anchored by scout-master Cheryl Wong along with Jacob Eschweiler, Hayyan Khalid, David Yang, Jason Wang, and Igal Flegmann did a superb job of finding out the strengths and weaknesses of each of our upcoming allies and opponents for every match.
Steve Docherty, with the help of Taylor and others, was able to wow several sets of judges circulating around the auditorium with unique features of our machines that demonstrated clever ideas put into actions, combining the best of inventive thinking, physics, math and design. Because of these features, the first of 3 trophies won for Ridley was the ‘Amaze’ award for innovation and design. This was largely Steve’s award.
Since Taylor won the 1-minute driver’s challenge, (and scored the second highest as well) we qualified a second machine for the World Championships at ESPN (in Disney, Florida) mid-April!
The biggest surprise of the day, especially after such a horrible start, was Tyler’s team. They fought their way through some tough opponents to get to the quarter finals, beat two machines ranked higher than them in the 1/4′s and semis, and eventually came second to the number 1 ranked team in the tournament. Their effort was outstanding! Since the top two teams qualify for the worlds at ESPN, we have now qualified all three of our machines for the world championships. Only 320 teams make it (out of over 3000 from 20 countries).
If you see any members of the team, please congratulate them. They made Ridley proud today. Thanks to Mr. Leigh, Mr. Martin and Ms. OR for joining us for the last three rounds. It was a rewarding (and exhausting) way to spend the first day of exams.
Well done team 1509, Rmageddon!
Dr. J.R. Hamilton Award Winners
The following students have been awarded the 2011 Dr. J. R. Hamilton Award for Science Enrichment. Please join me in congratulating,
Carrie Houston
Jordan Meyers
Heather Petrick
Callum Pollock
International Christmas Service
On any given day you can walk around the Ridley College campus and hear languages from thirty-one different countries. On Friday we held our annual International Christmas service in the Memorial Chapel where we were able to see students from those countries read a Christmas passage in their native language. We heard thirteen different languages – Hebrew, Latin, English, Spanish, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, French, Mandarin, Russian, German, Italian and Latvian. As a school located in Canada we embrace multiculturalism and cherish the fact that we can share languages and traditions from different countries and cultures with each other.
Check out the video from the service:
Ridley VEX Robotics Team
The VEX Robotics team travelled to Toronto this past weekend for a tournament where 60 teams from schools across Ontario competed. One of our teams piloted by Tyler Porter, won 5 matches in the round robin and finished 3rd out of 60 teams, a remarkable effort. In the competition round that followed, our scouts, led by Cheryl Wong, enabled us to ally with a team from Governor Simcoe, one of only two machines to have finished 6-0. Fate has twisted humour, however, and after winning the quarterfinals, our team 1509B lost to the eventual winner in the semi-finals. Our gifted alliance partner had a mechanical fault and only scored 10 points instead of the usual 30. We lost by 7! That said, we finished the tournament in 3rd spot, a fabulous result. The great news is that we won the skills challenge, posting the best score out of all 60 teams. Team 1509R scored 83 points. The next best was 68. This win means we have qualified this machine for the World Championships in April, this year hosted by ESPN sports and held at Disney.
Thanks to all who participated and helped get us ready, but special thanks to Mr. McCambley who served as a team mentor leading up to and during the contest.
