One of the highlights of the year is our annual Science week which is always popular with the students (and staff). This year, we revisited a few old favorites as well as trying some new ideas. For us, one of the central purposes of Science week is to provide the students with life-long memories, showing them that science is about excitement.
We started the week with our Ice-cream workshop, in which Year 9 students made ice-cream using liquid nitrogen. This is always a very popular event and this year was no exception. We also opened this to our Year 7 students and their parents in two after-school sessions. Again, student (and parent) enthusiasm ran very high indeed. We followed this with a whole day of science illusions for our Year 8 students. A guest speaker astounded everyone with a dazzling array of mind-bending experiments, including making a test tube (literally) invisible. Again, the students were talking about that for weeks after.
Later on in the week, the Chemistry department ran a whole day of spectacular flash-bang demonstrations in the hall for every student. Oohs and aahs were set to maximum as fireballs and explosions filled the air.
We rounded off the week with our old favourite, Rocket Day (in fact two days). Starting with a seemingly random array of old cardboard boxes and tubes, the odd bit of sellotape and plenty of imagination, our Year 7 students built their own rockets, which were then launched on Oldham Edge (much to the shock of our Year 11 boys who were taking part in cross-country at the time). Students love Rocket Day, as witnessed by our Year 9 students who asked if they could repeat the day that they themselves took part in two years ago.
