Year 6 Lancing Science Challenge

Twelve Year 6 students were chosen to attend the 2016 Science Challenge, run by Lancing College.  It was a great event and the children were very excited to be a part of it.  On arrival they were sorted into three teams, Biology, Chemistry and Physics.  They were led off to their various labs, where they were split into teams with other schools.  Everyone was mixed up into a team with people they did not know.  They were then presented with various challenges that they had to solve within the given time.

 

Everyone got stuck in and got to know their team members quickly.   I was particularly impressed with our students, they were enthusiastic, polite and got on with their tasks very well.

 

In the Physics challenge they had to build a tower to balance a tennis ball and carry out various measuring tasks where accuracy was the key.

 

 Charlotte's tower won their challenge!

 Georgia trying to measure the period of a pendulum.

 Felix and his team's tower.

Lexi working with her team to calculate the weight of a small ball of plasticine.

 

In the Chemistry challenge their task was the get a mixture down to 0 degrees, they needed to calculate the correct amount of each reactant to achieve this.

 Alice doing the calculations

 Hermione discussing the method with her team mates.

 Uliana measuring the temperature.

William answering some of the tricky questions.

 

In Biology the teams rotated around various stations that involved different activities about animals, plants and different habitats.

 Efosa doing some drawings of different fruits.

 Jamie working well with her group.

 Robert classifying various things according to different criteria.

William thinking hard!

 

After the challenges there was a great talk by The Cycling Scientist, who demonstrated different properties of carbon dioxide.

 

 

Then the winners were announced.  We didn't place in the top 3 schools, although Robert's team won the Biology section.

 

There is Robert collecting his prize.

 

Overall, the team did really well, showing off good manners and making the most of the day.  Well done Year 6!

 

 

 

Year 6 are a bit seedy

On Thursday Year 6 went to Wakehurst place

 to look at the life cycle of flowering plants.

 They were split into two groups.

Which took turns to visit the grounds 

and the Seed Bank,

 where there are over 2 billion seeds.

Its very cold in the Cryo-storage facility.

The pupils learned lots about the work Kew does 

 to save seeds from plants that may become extinct

 because of habitat destruction due to Man's effects on the planet

 and climate change.

 The variety of seeds is enormous,

 as is the difference in their size.

 This is the worlds largest seed, weighing in at 23kg!

The smallest ones are from an orchid. 

 Pupils learned how useful seeds are.

And made their own films showing the work done at the seed bank. 

Some budding directors and presenters were in their element.

The green houses are for germinating the stored seeds to check they are still viable. 

Outside we saw lots of different flowers 

and examined them without damaging them. 

Some were wind  pollinated

 and others were insect pollinated,

so they have scent to attract the insects 

and pretty petals to advertise nectar is here. 

This was a great mornings education in beautiful surroundings and with excellent weather.

I remember why I love the summer term.

Year 7 make light work of it

Year 7 were busy trying to prove the law of reflection today

 They set up an incident ray

Shining onto a mirror 

And marked the reflected ray 

 Then they repeated the experiment for another incident ray

 Making sure each ray was clearly marked

and labelled 

Next task was to measure the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection 

 For every pair

 These results will be used

 to plot a graph

which should show us the law of reflection.

Isidore Project: Week 2

4B have been back to the Science lab to monitor the progress of project 'Isidore' this week and the first set of results are in!

Just as a quick reminder, two sets of seeds have been sown.  One set of seeds in the blue trays and one set in the red trays, but the question for the children in school is which set of seeds have been in to space with astronaut Tim Peake and which are those that have remained on Earth?

Results:

And these results have swayed 4B predictions.  90% of the class chose the blue seeds as those that had been in to space, reasoning that the change in conditions would have harmed their chance of germination.  Will they be proven right and what do the rest of the school think?  Watch this space...

Year 6 at the Millennium seed bank

Today Year 6 are visiting Wakehurst Place

We met our teacher Helen who introduced us to Wakehurst. 

Then told us all about what happens in the Seed Bank.