Dry ice and time in Science Week

New skills, exciting experiments and creative thinking - this year's British Science Week at Westbourne House was a huge hit!

It’s the 30th anniversary of British Science Week and this year the theme was Time. Our budding scientists thought about time and looking to the future. The children have discussed what time means to them, ways to measure time and thought about things that go slowly (snails, plants growing, building cities and doing prep!) and quickly (a marlin, cheetah and space rockets). 

Pupils in Years 4-6 made a marble ramp. Year 4 were trying to make it the slowest run possible and Years 5 and 6 trying to get the marble to travel 1m in exactly 30 seconds, which proved to be a very challenging task indeed. The winning year group was Year 5 with a time of 25 seconds. They had to think about the surface and friction and then add ways to slow the marble down, as well as perfecting the angle of the ramp.

There's no doubt that science experiments have the power to enthral. All pupils enjoyed Mr Brown's experiments demonstrating some of the properties of carbon dioxide using some very cool dry ice (at a temperature of -78.5C). They witnessed giant bubbles, bubbling flasks and rings of gas, as well as exploding balloons and bouncing bubbles off the surface of the gas. They have learnt about sublimation and the density of carbon dioxide, easily seen as the gas falls to floor instead of rising up into the air. 

Freddie said: “The smoke rings were really cool to watch and see if they could go over the stand, it was such a fun lesson”. 

Year 5 and 6 had a competition to think of ways to describe what time means. In Year 5, Idris said: “Without time you wouldn’t know when stuff is going to happen or when it happened” and Willow added: “Copernicus noticed the timing wasn’t right with the way planets were orbiting earth, so he realised that everything orbited the sun.” In Year 6, Edward said: “Time lets you know when to get to lessons” and Tali said: “It takes time for animals to adapt to their environment and it takes time for the body to grow up”. They were all winners and received a Timeout bar of chocolate!

Year 2 came to the science department as part of their Fire and Ice topic, and learnt about solids, liquids and gases changing state with Mr Brown, Miss Day and a few Year 8 helpers. The Year 8s handed out bubbles of dry ice bubbled through washing up liquid for the children to hold and pop, and when they popped they saw the gas escape looking like smoke and it made their hands a little cold. They loved seeing the different, crazy experiments that you could do with dry ice e.g. exploding hands, Boo bubbles, bubble towers and smoke rings. 

Volunteers from Brent Lodge came in to talk to Years 7 & 8 about the importance of time in nature: looking after animals at different times of year, when to look out for different animals, what to do if an animal shouldn’t be out and about at a particular time of year. 

A mixed group of pupil scientists from different years also went to an IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) Faraday Challenge event at Prebendal and Alex has written a brilliant write up of both the event and the invention.