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Welcome to the Autumn Term!
We hope that you enjoy looking at our work!
Week 7 - Yuk! Gloop!
Week 7 - Yuk! Gloop!
This last week of the term, we thought about how horror films make their special effects. What goes into making a zombie mask. This started a discussion on the properties needed for the materials needed make scary masks and gloopy substances that represent features like ectoplasm!
This video was really good at giving us an idea of what is needed to make a Zombie mask! It looks so real!
We looked into a wierd material called ooblek. The name Oobleck comes from a book Dr. Seuss wrote called Bartholomew and the Oobleck about a king who is tired of boring normal weather like rain and snow. He asked his page boy to find some magicians that could make something new to fall from the sky. They made a green goo called Oobleck. It almost destroyed the city getting stuck in trumpets and covering trees with slime.
Oobleck is a solid when tapped or rolled but a runny liquid when left along. These are the properties of a non-Newtonian liquid; it acts like a liquid when at rest and like a solid when put under pressure.
We then explored a more relable source of goo, slime. This ended up being more like putty and less runny!
This was a really great way to end both the term and our Spooky Themed Science Club!
Week 6 - Flying Bats
Week 6 - Flying Bats
In this weeks' science club we investigated the spooky world of bats.
We started by collating amazing facts about bats, recording our information in a 'graffiti wall' on the white board.
We were surprised to learn that bats have a key role in pollination and without them the cacao tree would not be here - shock horror - no chocolate.
Other facts include: a diet of fruit, flexible finger bones, long snouts and that they are host to quite a few communicable diseases, especially zoonotic ones.
We then all had a go at making paper bats with the challenge of producing flappy wings. We watched a video explaining the factors that affect how planes fly then we learnt how to make our own!
We had some success and one ended up on the roof joining last weeks' film canister from ghost rockets.
Good fun all round!!
Week 5 - Ghost Rockets
Week 5 - Ghost Rockets
What better way to design a spooky ghost but to make it launch up into the sky with a super big whoosh! This week, we built alkaseltzer ghost rockets!
We used film canisters, alka seltzer tablets and water.
We learnt that the right ratio was essential in getting the canisters to fly really high. It made us really appreciate the power of chemical reactions and the power of pressure.
We learnt about the reaction involved and that the gas was Carbon Dioxide.
The challenge was to make the highest flying rocket.
We managed at leaves 5 m!
The best combination was half a tablet and 10 cubic centimetres of water mixed.
Week 4 - Making Spider Webs
Week 4 - Making Spider Webs
This week, we thought about how spiders make their webs. We watched this interesting video about spider thread, webs and how they use them.
We discussed properties of materials, thinking about elastic potential energy stored in stretchy ones, and how important this is for a spider's web when a fast moving bug flies straight into a web. It is important that it does not rip!
We discovered the silk is made of a special protein from the abdomen. Our favourite web is the one constructed by the Gladiator spider.
We then set about getting very messy designing then making our own spooky spider webs.
We used our laptops to research different web designs to be able to understand in detail what we might need to know to be able to make our own.
After designing our template on tracing paper, we dipped the correct lengths of wool into PVA glue and carefully laid them over our templates.
A week later, they were dry and they were slightly stretchy!
We stuck them on the classroom windown, just in time for Halloween!
Week 3 - Catapults (flinging Spooky objects...)
Week 3 - Catapults (flinging Spooky objects...)
This week we took on a new challenge! How do you fire objects using elastic energy? We thought about how Romans used catapults, as did people in medieval times.
We talked to our teacher about tension, elastic energy, other types of energy stores and different types of catapults.
We watched this video. It really helped us understand the Science behind how simple catapults are made.
Our teacher then gave us a selection of objects to start designing our catapult: pencils, elastic bands (of all sizes and lengths), spoons, wooden rulers and more! We were given 15 minutes to build our first catapult! If you want to have a go, we recommend this video to give you some ideas!
This is us building our catapults!
Testing and thinking about how to improve what we have built is a really important skill. Our teacher encouraged us to test run our catapults (we were given sugar cubes) and see what might be changed to allow it to fling the cubes further. We were impressed with how far we were able to send out cubes, but obviously we wanted to go further! Our teacher brought out a tray if different metal springs and we looked to see how we could put these into our catapults to make them better.
We just like this video. We watched it as we made our catapults.
IMG_0224.MOVIMG_0225.MOVWeek 2 - Mummified Apples (the result) & Floating Ghosts
Week 2 - Mummified Apples (the result) & Floating Ghosts
This week, we made Cartesian divers. They work because when you squeeze the bottle the water pressure goes up and squeezes the air in the pipette. This increases the density and the diver sinks. The tricky bit is working out how to get the diver to float when not squeezed and sink when squeezed. It took us 10 attempts to get it right - but we did it.
Friends saw what we had made and wanted one themselves. They should have come to STEM club.
Week 1 - Muffified Apples
Week 1 - Muffified Apples
It's almost Halloween!
Thinking about spooky science, we started STEM Club this term investigating which substance would be a great presevative for apples - yes, we tried to make Mummies using apples!
The decay of the apply would be due to bacteria present on the apple, so we tried to work out what we could use to stop the decomposition process occurring.
We started off by looking at how the ancient Egyptians used to mummify humans and animals.
Then, we looked at how apples decay over 85 days. This got us thinking about what might happen to humans if they were not mummified - yuk!
We used this website's instructions as a good method in how to mummify apples.
And then we watched this video to help us choose the right preservatives for our fresh apples.
We were given: sugar, salt, vinegar, sodium bicarbonate and a fabric rap to wrap a small slice of apple - just like mummification.
Then we placed them in a beaker where will leave them for a week. We also just covered the apple with the preservatives to see if wrapping was successful.
To make the test fair we put all of the apple slices under the same condition and we had the same sized slices as best we could. Next week we will find out how they got on!
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