Activities tagged Chemistry
Decomposition of hydrogen peroxide
18th August 2010
Earthing up potatoes and second attempt at collecting oxygen
Working in pairs, using a conical flask and a delivery tube pupils mixed hydrogen peroxide and manganese dioxide and hydrogen peroxide. They collected the gas and tested oxygen gas.
Space
08th March 2010
Study of the solar system and how space is being explored.
Use is being made of a model solar system to explain how earth fits into the great scheme of things. A module has been dedicated to telescopes and use has been made of the telescopes previous club members made last year. A future module will cover rockets with experiments taking place in the playground. We hope to use dry ice to create our own universe!
The club members have enjoyed eating food the astronauts have to eat – i.e. dried strawberrries and ice cream!
School Open Evening
11th November 2009
Our club helped organise and run the autumn open evenning for the Science and Engineering faculties. Our group illustrated the work that they have been doing in ASSET and helped the visitors conduct their own Key styage 3 practicals whilst explaining the theory behind them.
Big Bang Fair Yorkshire
15th July 2010
“Last Thursday we took our STEM team to the Sheffield Kelham Island Museum to showcase the Tennis Ball Mortar project. Unfortunately not all of the team could attend, but those that did served them admirably.
The team were showing off their project for the Silver CREST awards and were competing in the Best CREST project competition against many other schools from the area.
This was an excellent opportunity for the pupils to see what other schools gave been up to and to ““steal”“ some ideas for their next project. More importantly though, this science fair gave pupils to best opportunity to take some ride in their work and talk to some people who real have an interest in what they have been doing and recognise the effort and hard work that completing these projects takes.
I am most glad and extremely proud to say that our pupils project The Tennis Ball Mortar was voted best project and the pupils duly praised by all involved.
Thank you Big Bang!!”
Circuit Design
25th January 2010
STEM Club is attempting to design an automated Greenhouse.
The design brief ‘A keen gardener will be taking a 7 day holiday, he wants to know that his plants will be safe’
Pupils will be introduced to discrete components, and will use 555IC Timing circuit and 741IC Op Amp. To design and model an automated greenhouse. It is hoped that some pupils will be entered for the CREST Silver Award.
Crime Scene update
13th October 2010
Finger Print Analysis, DNA, Blood Splatters, Time of Death, Murder Weapons, we have it all. Who was our Killer, When and How did it happen
The Shackleton Centenary Expedition
17th August 2010
In January of this year Andrew Ledger became one of the youngest people to journey (900 mile route) across the coldest, windiest, driest and most inhospitable place on Earth to the South Pole. He was part of an Expedition which retraced the footsteps of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s team who came so close to being the first to reach the South Pole in 1908.
After winning a national competition from over 3,000 entrants, Andrew became part of a group which joined the team at the exact time and place a century ago where Shackleton’s men were forced back, completing a journey they never made. A Timewatch documentary about the Expedition was screened on BBC2, and since returning from Antarctica Andrew has spoken to in excess of 4,000 students from over 30 schools across the country.
email (ledgerandrew@gmail.com)
www.shackletoncentenary.org
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/7673696.stm
http://www.shackletoncentenary.org/press/henry-worsley-and-andrew-ledge.php
Crime Scene Investigation (CSI)
02nd March 2012
Students donned their gloves and aprons, grabbed their police evidence note books for the first session of the CSI STEM. After being allowed to cross the crime scene cordoned area, students set about trying to solve ‘who dunnit’!!
In this first session students learnt the importance of collecting evidence from a crime scene. They took photos of the murder site and recorded any suspicious happenings before formally interviewing each of the 4 suspects (they all looked shady to me!!!). They took the 4 suspect’s finger prints and looked at fibres found at the scene under a microscope, sketching their appearance. All of their evidence from week 1 was bagged up ready for the 2nd and 3rd sessions.
Still to come in the CSI programme; students will take trainer prints from a variety of footwear and try to match it to one they ‘should’ have taken a photo of. They will compare their fingerprint samples with ones Forensic Scientists found on the victim. Students will also carry out a chromatography investigation to determine the ink used to write the note left at the scene.
The final session see’s students using DNA extraction techniques, just like the real deal!! (apart from we will look at the DNA of…fruit!!!)
The ultimate question remains…….WHO DUNNIT!!!!
A bit of a Lemon
01st February 2012
It’s the classic making electricity from citrus fruit. Students experimented making batteries using various citrus fruit, copper pipe and zinc (recovered from old zinc carbon cells)
The idea was to produce as much electricity as possible. It was found that there was a limit to the number of ‘cells’ that could be connected together… but let’s not spoil the story.
Lights. camera, action!!
21st September 2010
This projects kicks off with a trip to the National Media Museum in Bradford to look at the development of cameras and film and take a trip into space!
