-Longshore drift

-Coastal erosion

-Cliff/Slope height

-Wave frequency

When we arrived we set out our gear on the sand and got all the things we needed from Mr O’Hanlon and Ms Farrell.we then started our field study on the beach.

The first thing we did was measured longshore drift, we placed a ranging rod🚩 in the sand to mark our starting point. We then threw an orange into the sea and once it passed the ranging rod we started a stopwatch. After 3 minutes had elapsed we marked the position of the orange on the beach with another ranging rod and ran into the sea to get the orange before it floated away to Wales.🚣Some oranges were lost in this exercise😭

We repeated the exercise 3 times and measured the distance the orange went on each one to get an average.

The next thing we did was identify features of coastal erosion such as the cliff faces and an old ruined house near the cliff face, we then sketched the beach from north to south and then south to north.Afterwards we all went and had our lunch🍞.

After lunch we went over to the cliffs and slopes and used trigonometry📐 and other formulas to try work out the height of each slope/cliff face. Looks like we learned some stuff in maths after all!🎓📐. We then got into the sea with our ranging rods to calculate the wave frequency.We started a stopwatch and every time a wave went passed the rods (and soaked us too!!😬)we marked it into our sheets,after 3 minutes we stopped the stopwatch and got an average after doing the exercise 3 times, it was so cold in the water that we were delighted to be on the beach were it was warm.

We then got out our quadrats and threw them all over the beach, we then got 4 stones from each one and identified their long axis length🗜 and their class on the angular/smooth scale,measuring pebbles….YAY(!) 😄

After completing all our exercises and collecting all the data we needed we chilled on the beach for a while,but sadly the normal Irish weather kicked in and it started to rain,so we waited in the rain for our bus to arrive, thankfully the bus arrived a few minutes after it started to rain so we didnt get too wet,we got on the bus and went back to school just as the bell rang.

I learned that it is important to work as a team and it is also important to work hard to get good data,it may take a while but the more times you do an exercise the more accurate the data will be. I found that the most important thing is to have fun on these little outings and make sure you come back to school happy with what you have done.😁👍