Rescued!

Second miner to reach the surface

Thirty-three trapped Chilean miners in the San Jose mine since 5 August were freed in October after 69

days!

I reckon they must have been

very scared!

I watched them being rescued on the

television. It was 17 days before anyone

knew they were alive.

How do you think the miners would have felt?

Newsreader

Princess and Charlie

TheRescue

11:15 pm on Tuesday, a

technical expert was lowered down the 624 m shaft. At

9:55 pm on Wednesday the

last man came up.

Two spoonfuls of tuna, half a biscuit and half a glass of milk every 48 hours!

First hot food in 27 days underground –

Lunch: meatballs with rice and kiwi fruit for dessert.

Dinner: chicken with peas and a pear.

Their diet had 2 000 to 2 500 calories per day.

Chile Fact File

The Atacama desert: 40 600 square miles in northern Chile. The Pacific coastline:

6 435 kilometres.

Population:

approximately 17 196 673

The major ethnic groups:

Mestizo (mixed native

American and European

ancestry): 66%

Europeans: 25%

Native Americans: 7%

The east of the country is very mountainous, with peaks up to 16 000 feet.

About 1 250 000 square

kilometres is in

Antarctica.

It is 4 300 km long and on average 175 km wide.

It’s in the News!Teachers guideIn October we saw the amazing rescue of the 33 Chilean miners who had been trapped for 69 days in a gold and copper mine near Copiapo, San Jose, in the Atacama Desert. We thought this would be a good event to explore in this issue of It’s in the News! There are links to geography and science as well as a heart-warming story of survival against all odds. Before you use the slides you might find it helpful to look at these websites for further information:BBC MSN … continued on the next slide

… continued this site has a good video which shows part of the rescue, and this site tells the story from the eyes of the wife of the oldest survivor.These slides provide opportunities for work on mathematical concepts including number, time, measurement and percentages.

1st spread: Rescued!● Look at a map of the world and identify where Chile is. In which continent is it, which

ocean is it beside, what is its capital city?

● Copiapo is about 800 km north of the Chilean capital of Santiago. How far is this in miles? Explore this by linking cities in the UK and Europe. The children could draw a map of Chile and the route to a scale of their choice from Santiago to Copiapo. Extend by using maps and their scales to work out how far Copiapo is from your location.

● You could ask the children to estimate how many rocks they can see on the slide (this is a picture of one brought up from the mine). You could also use this as an opportunity to practice one/ten more/less, number pairs to ten, and simple addition and subtraction of single digit numbers.

● Ask the children to look at the Chilean flag, what shapes can they see? What shape is the star (decagon)? What type of star is it?

● Can they estimate what fraction or percentage the different coloured parts of the flag are of the whole. This could lead in to some ratio and proportion work. You could discuss the symmetry of the part with the star in it. The children could design their own flags and explore fractions and symmetry further e.g. design a flag with two lines of symmetry, a flag that is divided into fifths, a flag that has 1/3 with a pattern on it.

● Which other countries have a star on their flag? Which do not? Ask the children to explore which type of diagram would be best to show this information – a Venn diagram, Carroll diagram, bar chart, pie chart or something else?

● You could explore the number 33. What is special about it? How many ways can you make that number using addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and fractions? What are its factors? Can you find some of its multiples?

● Discuss the fact that the mine collapse happened on 5 August. What were the children doing on that date?

…continued on the next slide

1st spread: Rescued! continued…● You could use this as an opportunity to look at calendars. If the miners were in the mine

for 69 days, when were they released, how many weeks, months, hours, minutes had they been trapped for? A probe discovered that the miners were still alive after 17 days: what day was that? How many weeks, hours, minutes were they down there undetected?

● Look at the comments of the children. How do you think the miners must have been feeling during the 17 days when no one knew they were alive? How must they have felt when they were discovered? When their release was imminent?

● You could ask the children to find pictures of the miners and find out how old each one is. They could plot these ages on a number line. What was the mean, median and mode age of the miners?

● Look at the picture of the Fenix 2. What size do they think it is? Tell them that the width was little larger than the breadth of a man’s shoulders. They could do some measuring of their shoulders. They could estimate first and then measure, finding who has the broadest shoulders, the smallest and ordering the lengths. If you are male, or have a male member of staff, you could compare shoulder measurements with this. They could investigate the body ratio of width of shoulder to height, arm length, feet etc.

● They could draw a diagram of the Fenix based on their shoulder-width, scaling down their shoulder measurements and heights. They could then make a model using kitchen roll tubes, cardboard or something similar. Alternatively, they could make a rescue capsule for a small-world play figure.

2nd spread: The Rescue● President Piñera was there throughout the rescue. You could ask the children to research

him, find out his date of birth, age, how many presidents came before him. Apparently he is a billionaire: explore the idea of being one of those! How much money is that? What sort of car might he drive, house might he live in?

● His regular appearances at Camp Hope did a lot to improve his approval ratings which rose from 46% to 57%. You could use this to work on percentages and fractions e.g. What is 46% as a fraction, a decimal?

● From the information on the slide, ask the children to work out how long the actual rescue of the miners took, from the engineer going down to the last miner coming out.

● They could make a scaled copy of the diagram on the slide.

● Rescue workers drilled a 66 centimetre-wide shaft, through which the men were pulled out one at a time. Can the children use this measurement to draw a circle on a large piece of paper so that they can visualise the size of the hole they came up through? They could scale this measurement down in order to make a small diagram. You could also find out how much space there would have been by simulating this using hoops or making a circle from art straws.

● Given the small diameter of the borehole, each miner had to have a waistline of no more than 90 centimetres to be hauled up to safety. In order to ensure they were the correct size, the men were ordered to do 20 minutes of aerobic exercise a day to prevent muscle cramps on the way up. The children could investigate their waist sizes, would they have been able to get to safety?

● If the miners exercised every day from the day they were found to the day they were rescued, how many hours and minutes did they exercise for in total? The children could invent an aerobic exercise routine and try this out for 20 minutes.

…continued on the next slide

2nd spread: The Rescue continued…● The supply chute for their food and other supplies was a diameter of 30 centimetres.

Again, they could use this measurement to draw a circle to visualise the size of the chute. What type of food could be sent down the chute – was it big enough for large packets of cereal, bread, tins of soup etc?

● Each worker was winched up the rescue shaft, equipped with a helmet, gloves, water, food and oxygen. It was originally estimated that each trip could take up to 90 minutes. How long would this have taken for 33 miners? In the end it was a 16-minute journey each way. How much shorter is this time individually, and for all the miners? For what proportion of the rescue time was the capsule actually occupied?

● It was said that this was a national crisis that began when 700 000 tons of rock collapsed, sealing the men in the lower reaches of the mine. Can they imagine what700 000 tons is? You could convert this to kilograms and grams and weigh some classroom items on bathroom scales and then work out the equivalent number of these to make that amount.

● There was one Bolivian trapped with the Chilean miners. You could ask the class to research Bolivia – population, temperature, rainfall, currency (with conversions to sterling) etc.

● When the men were undetected they made 48 hours’ worth of rations last for the first 17 days. They each had two spoons of tuna a day. You could measure out two spoonfuls of tuna – what weight is that? You could ask the children to plan two days’ food and then work out how they could make that last for 17 days. When they were found, a chute was constructed so they could receive meals of between 2 000 and 2 500 calories. Can the children work out how much tuna that would be? You could explore calories – what meals could they come up with that have this number of calories? How many calories does a child, woman and man need a day?

…continued on the next slide

2nd spread: The Rescue continued…● They were 624m below the surface – can the children visualise this? It is approximately

half a mile. They could work out how many heights of one particular child would be equivalent to this. Is there a nearby or famous building of about the same height for comparison, for example St David’s Tower (where Big Ben is) or the Eiffel Tower? The Big Ben tower is 96.3m (316 ft), so how many of this tower deep were the men?

● The temperature in the mine was around 40°C. Can they imagine how hot that is? Give them some average summer temperatures in the UK to compare. You could convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit. They could find countries in the world that reach this temperature and discuss what they all have in common.

● There were more than 1 000 journalists and families and friends waiting above ground for the rescue. Sometimes the nightly temperatures were below freezing. Compare this with UK winter temperatures.

● The only media allowed to record them coming out of the shaft was a government photographer and Chile’s state TV channel. The live broadcast was delayed by 30 seconds or more to prevent the release of anything unexpected. Photographers and camera operators were on a platform more than 300 feet (90 meters) away. You could do some work around these facts.

● Rescuers finished reinforcing the top of the 2 041ft (622m) escape shaft on the Monday before the rescue, and the 13-foot (four-meter) capsule was ready to go. Prepare a wide strip of paper 13 feet/4 metres long, the same as the capsule. How many children can lie along the paper without going over the edge? Estimate first. Explore using different children.

● The capsule, the biggest of three built by Chilean navy engineers was named Phoenix (Fenix 2) after the mythical bird that rises from ashes. It is painted in the white, blue and red of the Chilean flag. Can they look at their original model of the capsule and adjust it for this length?

…continued on the next slide

2nd spread: The Rescue continued…● They were given a high-calorie liquid diet donated by NASA, designed to keep them

from vomiting as the capsule rotated 10 to 12 times through curves in the 28-inch-diameter escape hole. How many rotations in total? What is 28 inches in centimetres? You could explore what types of food/drink would be high in calories.

● Engineers inserted steel piping at the top of the shaft, which was angled 11 degrees off vertical before plunging like a waterfall. Use this as an opportunity to explore angles. What effect do the children think it would have if the angle measurement was different? They could experiment with toy cars and slopes of this angle to see the effect.

3rd spread: Chile Fact File● You could print out this slide, enlarge the map of Chile and give a copy to pairs of

children. Ask them to highlight the capital city and the Atacama Desert. They could then use the scale to plot where they think the mine might be, using the information that it is about 800 km north of Santiago. They could measure distances from town to town and practice converting from kilometres to miles and vice versa.

● Look at the distances: 4 300 km long and 175 km wide. Convert these distances to miles. Encourage the children to scale down their own map by perhaps changing the km to centimetres and dividing by 100. You could discuss by how much you have scaled the measurements down in total. They could look up other distances and find some similar to the length or width of Chile.

● You could look further into the statement that 6 435 km are on the Pacific coastline – how can this be if the country is 4 300 km long?

● You could do some work around the information on the area of Chile that is in Antarctica. Can they think of some way to represent this on squared paper. You could revise the area of perimeter and area of shapes.

● How much of Chile is in Antarctica?

● Ask them to read the number that shows the population. You could compare it with the population in the UK. You could do some place value work on this amount and take numbers away from it in order to have zero, discussing the importance of it as a place holder. Digit card work could be fun. Ask the children to make big numbers and read them to one another.

● Discuss the ethnicity of the population. Can they approximate how many there are of each group? This would be another good opportunity to practice percentages.

…continued on the next slide

3rd spread: Chile Fact File continued…● They could find out the currency of the country and do some work converting amounts

to sterling. They could look in food and other shop catalogues and brochures, work out things to buy, total cost and then convert to Chilean currency.

● Explore the maximum and minimum temperatures on the slide. When is the hottest/coldest month, what is the mean, median, mode and range of the temperatures? You could discuss why it is hot in December and colder in July.

● Explore the average rainfall identifying the driest and wettest months. Again, look at mean, median, mode and range.

● You could explain that these temperatures are for Santiago but that the climate is very different in other parts of the country. Ask them to research what it is like in the north and the south and to think about why this is.

● Focus on the desert. You could use ideas from the desert article in this issue of the magazine. How big do they think it is? They could find the area of England and compare it with the desert area.

● Focus on the mountainous area in the east. This issue of the magazine also has an article on mountains which might give further ideas for you to think about. Ask the children to work out how high 16 000 feet is. How high in metres? They could find out how many of their heights high this is.