Hi! My name is Quinnisha Smith. I'm 11 years old and I go to Delmar Elementary School. I'm in the 6th grade and my teacher's name is Miss Hopkins. We come to Mrs. Weeg's Kidlink lab to use the computers at recess time. We come because we like to write to kids in the U.S.A and other countries. When we come to Kidlink we can see how it is in other countries and states. We learn about cultures and we learn about schools, holidays, and how the people in other places live.

I did a graph on students' estimates of the population of Delmar on both Maryland and Delaware sides. At recess a girl named Tessa Newhouse and I asked the kids at Kidlink to estimate how many people they thought lived in Delmar. When we finished asking the estimates of everybody we made a graph and an introduction to go with it. Mrs. Weeg sent it to the KIDLINK lists for the Math Project. Here is our graph:

********************
Math Keypal Project
Population Estimate
Delmar, Maryland USA
********************

We asked the kids in the computer room how many people they think live in Delmar on the Maryland and Delaware side? Delmar is in the middle of Delaware and Maryland so they had to estimate for both sides of Delmar.

Here are the estimates:
----------------------

Linette Custis -    10,000
Betty Thomas-       15,000
Rhae Hart -          6,000
Megan Dickerson-     3,002
Ashley Workman-      6,003
Tessa Newhouse-      9,999
Holly Ly-            9,000
Jamie Hutchison-     5,600
Dawn Tomey-          7,100
Quinnisha Smith-     7,000

(chart by Quinnisha)

Here is the graph that Tessa made from the data:

       Students' Guesses of Delmar's Population


 S    -----------------------------------------------------------
 T    Linette Custis : ******************
 U    -----------------------------------------------------------
 D    Betty Thomas   : **********************************
 E    -----------------------------------------------------------
 N    Rhae Hart      : **********
 T    -----------------------------------------------------------
 S    Megan Dickerson: ****
     -----------------------------------------------------------
 W    Ashley Workman : **********
 H    -----------------------------------------------------------
 O    Tessa Newhouse : ******************
     -----------------------------------------------------------
 G    Holly Ly       : *****************
 U    -----------------------------------------------------------
 E    Jamie Hutchison: **********
 S    -----------------------------------------------------------
 S    Dawn Toomey    : ************
 E    -----------------------------------------------------------
 D    Quinnisha Smith: ************
     -----------------------------------------------------------
                      1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
                           Population in thousands

The population of Delmar (Maryland side and Delaware side combined) is 2,392.

Tessa Newhouse
Grade 6
--------------

Mr. Bill Miasek works with Nasa at Wallops Island Flight Facility near Chincoteague. He sends us e-mail. He helps design rockets and is a telemetry engineer. Starting this month he will be going to Woomera, Australia to launch rockets. They are going to launch seven rockets. They are going to call it "Australia Campaign 95". They will have to take their own food because there isn't a lot of people or food near them. He will be leaving on the 17th. Next week Mr. Bill is coming to Delmar to visit us. When he is in Australia he will keep sending us e-mail and will tell us all about the rocket launching. He sent us some mail this week:

Hi Jarrett,
Australia will be having their Spring time, going into winter. It should be about 90-95 degrees in the daytime, but cool off quickly at night. Yes we will have telephones and the best phone rate will be about $1.26 per minute. The closest town is about 50 Km away, but its not much of a town. It's about 1/4 the size of Delmar. The next closest town is about 500 Km away. Soccer, which they call football, is very popular down under.

Hi Deanna,
We have all kinds of safety rules. Since rocket motors are considered explosives, we have to be very careful working with and around them. We have high power radar systems, electricity and big equipment to work with. The equipment that we use is specialized to measure and calibrate the scientific experiments that we put in the rockets. I will see you soon.

Casie,
I've seen that spacesuit and I have wished that I could try it on. I'll bet that it is heavy, but you know out in space there is no gravity so it would not weigh anything out there. On the last shuttle flight they tried out a new spacesuit that is made out of new materials that help make it more comfortable.

Dale,
Rockets are long cylinders that are put together in sections, and in each section we have instruments attached. It is sort of like stacking a bunch of Coke cans on top of each other. The instruments we are using this time are telescopes, like the one's you look at stars with. We are going too look at stars that are very far away.

Bye,
Bill

Deniz is our keypal friend in Turkey. She wrote to us and said that she and her mother are coming to Delaware because her mother is going to teach at the University of Delaware next spring. Deniz and her mother will be coming around January. Deniz will be going to a conference in England on the 22nd of October. Four kids will be representing Turkey and Deniz is one of them!!!!!

We meet some very nice friends using the Internet.

October 8, 1995 Quinnisha Smith Delmar Elementary School