British Science Week in March 2023 had the theme of “connections” this year, and so the science department “connected” with all the other subjects this week with some exciting lessons taking place.

In Physics, volunteers helped to demonstrate atomic spin as they learned about MRI medical imaging. For the theme of “making connections”, Year 8 students built Morse Code machines and learned how to transmit messages to each other. The students found it fun translating their friends’ secret messages across the room.

All around School, the students have enjoyed a Science clue hunt, collecting a word at each location on the School site. Chemistry students have been investigating the iodine clock reaction. It can be made to change colour at different times depending on the concentration of the reactants. The students were changing the concentration of one of the reactants to get the solution to change colour at 53 seconds – the atomic number of iodine!

In addition to Biology, Chemistry and Physics, where they looked at enzymes, iodine clock and morse code the students also studied Frankenstein in English, in Spanish they looked at prominent Spanish speaking scientists and in Drama and History debated women who made incredibly valuable contributions to modern day Science but who did not get the recognition they deserved. Mathematics students made connections with science through learning about the construction of scientific graphs, while attempting to investigate and uncover their teacher’s intentional mistakes.

The ever-present theme of climate change was the theme in Geography, and in Latin they looked at the origins of the periodic table. In Art, Year 7 boys caused a creative reaction, painting designs with lemon, washing powder & turmeric. The yellow turmeric paper turned brown in the presence of alkali, allowing original pictures to be created. In French, students have been entering a competition for the best anatomical drawing, using their French vocabulary knowledge.

Year 8 students were off timetable for an exciting Thinkers In Education Space Race Event. Students planned, organised, implemented, and evaluated a project to build a space lander going to Mars.