The science team celebrated the holidays with a set of festive practicals. There were balloons aplenty in the science lab as Year 8 explored ideas of static electricity. Lots of new vocabulary was introduced including terms like electrons, charge, non-contact forces, insulators, friction and delocalised electrons and we linked the ideas with real life experiences of static shock. The most common example amongst the pupils was jumping on trampolines in socks!
The lesson finished with the opportunity to convert the water balloons into Christmas baubles using yarn and PVA glue. It was as messy as it sounds.
The pupils of Year 9 planned their own investigation into the solubility of candy canes this term. They identified solvents to use as independent variables and made observations of the dependent variables (how much the colour and size of the canes changed). They identified important control variables to enable them to compare results. It turned out that the prediction that hydrochloric acid would be the best solvent was proved incorrect…
Hot water won by some considerable amount!
Pupils had fun designing Christmas ‘safety pods’ for an egg drop. They worked to a brief to produce and test vehicles that allowed raw eggs to be dropped from a 2m height without them breaking. As well as the physics of reducing impact time to minimise the force on the egg, the pupils in Key Stage 4 worked to a budget, a time scale, thought about marketing and the environmental impact of manufacture.
Congratulations to the Powerpuff Elves (Simran, Simona and Nell) for delivering a perfect egg to safety with good results across the full range of criteria.
No eggs were harmed in the implementation of this task!
