woodchurch science

10 year 9 pupils from woodchurch took part in this activity day at the discovery clc on 7th july 08. pupils were involved in three activities: a robot challenge, self-righting buoys and renewable energy driven cars. we came away with 2 trophies won in the robot challenge activity by lisa hill and jenny noonan. pupils were up against stiff competition from 5 other wirral schools; oldershaw, upton hall, birkenhead, south wirral and wirral grammar school for girls. well done to all who took part. team photo below.

if you get bored during the half term holiday and want to have a go using digital microscopes the learning lighthouse clc at birket avenue in moreton is holding free science sessions on wednesday 28th May 10am to 12noon and also 1pm to 3pm. The sessions are for ages 10 to 13.

You will get to use our digital microscopes to examine all sorts of objects under magnification. Take photographs of these objects and then work with adobe photoshop to add filters and change colours. bring some small objects you wish to examine. this is a family learning activity and all children must be accompanied by an adult who will be expected to participate, so bring your granny for a fun day out!

in a view to a kill james bond is left for dead in a lake by some villains. but instead of floating to the surface he remains underwater breahing air from a car tyre through the valve! is this really possible? what do you think?

on this day…christian friedrich schönbein died in 1868. he was a german-swiss chemist who discovered and named ozone and was the first to describe guncotton (nitrocellulose). he noted ozone appeared during thunderstorms and named the gas ozone for its peculiar smell (ozo is greek for smell). later experiments showed that sending an electric current through pure, dry oxygen creates ozone. his discovery of the powerful explosive called cellulose nitrate, or gun cotton, was the result of a laboratory accident! one day in 1845 he spilled sulphuric and nitric acids and soaked it with a cotton apron. after the apron dried, it burst into flames! It eventually was used for smokeless gun powder.

15 y9 pupils took part in a project to prepare perfumes. fragrances were extracted from rose petals, lavender, rosemary, mint, orange peel, cloves and stock by maceration and steam distillation. after break pupils then made simple soap from vegetable oil and caustic soda.




resources for this project can be found here:
teacher guide/technician guide/soap making instructions/pupil booklet

by ellen williams 8yw :on thursday 30th march, a lecturer from liverpool university named ‘sian owen’ visited our school to present a lecture to year 8 science sets called ‘science is cool’. all of the science groups in year 8 came to watch the fascinating experiments that were performed. (more…)

I know what you think, it’s a science lecture, and you’ve probably remembered science lectures to be boring, boring, boring! But this science lecture was different. It was brilliant.

Now when it first started, I didn’t know what to think. Would it be boring, would it be interesting, but like I said, it was brilliant. First of all, they lectured us on a bit of science like most lectures do, and then, it started to get good. The lecturers (the people giving the lecture), shook up a closed bottle of water without telling us what chemicals were inside, the water turned blue! What a surprise! But the next experiment they shown us was booming. like before, they gave us a little lecture about that they were going to make a flame near an object and watch the surprising results. The object exploded! And not just a little explosion, it was a massive explosion! And now enough of that, now on to the next part. This time, there were no explosions, but instead some useful information. Did you know, the bombardier beetle can shoot fire out of its bottom? So when any beetle eating ants come along, lets just say they will feel the burn! Afterwards, the lecturers shown us a little something called liquid nitrogen. It is a freezing liquid at a whopping -196°C! It’s alright if you get sprayed with it, it evaporates in a second! But when you put something in a vat of it, the matter becomes a totally different matter. If you put something in it, it freezes and can be smashed in half on a table!