Neat Baustelle

Recently we have been to the construction site of NEAT, this is the construction site of the new tunnel through the Gotthard mountain. The site is massive, the work they are doing that is really really impressive. The trip was really educational. A lot was explained on how it all works and why.
Here you can see it: http://www.alptransit.ch/de/besuchen-sie-uns/infozentren/erstfeld/

We had a presentation about the building and we had a tour through the area of the construction site. Unfortunately we couldn't go into the tunnel as our group of homeschoolers had too many children under 14 years of age in there, which was a pity.

What was hard for us in particular was that this site is in the canton Uri, there they speak very different Swiss German from our local area, which is already not easy, so we had trouble understanding initially, but we weren't the only ones, therefore they asked if the presenter could please speak school german, so everybody could understand :-)

Burning

One evening last week we ended up burning paper napkins, we experimented a bit with it, like one piece was burnt while it was just plain folded open and in a single layer, that was going really fast, one big woosh and gone.
Another piece was burnt folded, slower.
Another piece was unfolded, but rolled in a big cigar, that took a bit of time.
The longest took the piece that was folded and rolled up in a cigar, that was very compact and really took quite a bit of time.
Afterwards we discussed the hows, why's and what's to that whole process, including how the oxygen reaches better when not compact and all that stuff.