Now our classes have all changed due to the new timetable, we finished our project at the start of the Easter holidays. This is due to the difference in the school terms between England and Scotland. However we thought that April would be a good month to sum up all that we have done before we formally evaluate the project in May.
The aim of the project was to visit or work with scientific industries before taking the knowledge that we had learnt and complete simple ‘test-plant’ projects in the school laboratories. During our project we have:
- Visited the local gold mine and then our pupils made simple gold-plated objects from metal ores.
- Visited the local distillery before our pupils built stills from scrap material.
- Worked with a local chocolatier to allow our pupils to make their own chocolate.
- Visited a pharmaceutical company to look at how to diagnose illnesses and then have our pupils make simple test strips.
- Visit the local observatory and have our pupils build their own telescope.
- Work with the local rally club to understand and replicate the workings of a simple internal combustion engine.
- Visit the botanic gardens to allow our pupils to come up with ideas of making things from plant products
- Work with Napier University Materials department to look at working with plastic
- Work with a local farmer to allow our pupils to do simple soil testing.
- Worked with the Scottish fire brigade to allow our pupils to build and test their own fire extinguishers.
- Worked with a local fireworks pyro-technician to allow our pupils to gain knowledge to design and build their own firework.
- Worked with Abertay forensics department to allow pupils to contribute to a conference on biochemistry and to allow our younger pupils to do simple forensic techniques.
- Worked with Glasgow science centre to allow our pupils to extract DNA.
- Worked with UHI aeronautical engineering department to allow our pupils to build simple model aeroplanes
All lots of fun and given great learning opportunities for our pupils. We will find out next month what exactly our pupils thought of it – but our first impressions are good.
breadalbanerrscienceprize 