Science Week

Jenny Selinger – Head of Science

View from the Kleinlehrer Family Science Building

Aim: To have as much fun with Science as possible in the space of one week in August.

Equipment and reagents: Five sets of quirky puzzles, list of obscure items, citric acid, bicarb of soda, food colouring, water, cornflour, recycled items of which were mostly bottles and paper, metres of sticky tape, plenty of tricky questions, 5 rooms and a zoom and lots of willing and creative students.

Method:

Send far too many emails to students every day reminding them of the day’s activity
Set up the following:
Monday: Scavenger Hunt
Tuesday: Bath bombs
Wednesday: Model making with recycled materials (thanks tutors!)
Thursday: House Science Trivia Competition
Friday: Dress as an Element Day
Observe the reactions carefully.

Results:

Activity	Observations	Congratulations go to…
Scavenger Hunt	Students running around excitedly finding weird items and photographing them. Extreme glee as the points mount up and some fairly dodgy answers are accepted.	The anonymous winners (they didn’t put their names on the form!)
Bath Bombs	Mixing, stirring and moulding those chemicals into a ball … will it stay together long enough? Fizzzzzzz.	No results measured
Model Making	Creation of wild and wacky models – who knew our recycling concealed a variety of rockets, a multitude of solar systems, a crossbow, a tank, a tea drinker, a buckyball and a very impressive microscope?!	Year 10 Szenes for their brilliant microscope which actually appeared to work!
Trivia Quiz	Yelling, screaming and jumping up and down in answer to Ms Bishop’s questions. Groans when lunch came to an end.	Top scoring team: Year 11 Rashi. Overall winners: Meir House.
Dress as an Element	Many, many carbons, a few neons, some aluminiums and a silver or two. One titanium and at least one mercury. An arsenic, potassium, a helium or two and some other obscure elements that I am not too sure of.	Myles Cohn, the definitive Freddy Mercury!
Various puzzles and challenges	Year 11 entering all the puzzles and taking out all the prizes. A number of great poems submitted. Some new Hebrew words learnt (by me, if no one else!)	Ashley Cohn, Star of Science Week, who tried every challenge and participated in every activity