You've got Mail!

 

Here's what we did for school today!
We looked at a world map to find NZ, England and America and got an idea of how far our mail had to go. The kids were suprised that NZ is so small and I was suprised out how many cities are in America! We were going to colour in each city or town as we 'visit' but ended up deciding to colour in each state. Both Tui and Pearl are going to California but to different parts of California and it was getting pretty complicated trying to show it on our map!

Then we stated our MAIL EXPERIMENT....some of you will be getting mail soon! We are trying to find out how long it takes for mail sent at the same time on the same day at the same postal rate will take to get to different parts of NZ and America. We want to know if it the further the mail has to go actually has an affect on how long it takes to get there.

We looked at ways our mail moves (some great info on the NZ post website) and looked at the type of transport used.
Jacob was pleased to be able to use his lego and make a Fokker F27s like the plane NZ post uses- he really loves his lego :) There is a lot of fuel used getting mail around the world.(According to NZ Post it's over 3 million litres of diesel per yr just for the trucks)

We found out some interesing facts....
* The big Truck and Trailer that NZ post uses can carry 20 tonne of mail.
* They deliver 10,000 truck and tralier loads of mail a year, 40 loads per day. (10,000 x 20 tonne!)
* A standard letter weighs 50g...IF all mail was a standard letter that would equal 40,000,000 letters a year!
* NZ post has over 2000 posties, over 80 trucks, over 110 vans and 8 planes.
* One of the planes used by NZ post is a Fokker F27s, which can carry 5.5 tonnes of mail.
* The busiest time of day if NZ post is actually at night when mail is transported to larger centres for sorting.

So...there's a whole lot of info for one day!

A lot of the numbers were to big for the kids to comprehend but they are definatley a lot more aware of what happens before our mail reaches our box. Even for bills!