About: Mrs Metcalfe

Science Club

Today we extracted salt from rock salt.

This involved using lots of science apparatus.

We started off by recapping how to use a Bunsen burner.

 Then we started to prepare the rock salt, we started by crushing it with a pestle and mortar.

We then mixed it with water,so the salt would dissolve into the water.

We filtered our water to remove any rock and sand.

 Which left us with salt water. Some filtered better than others.

We then heated the salt water with a Bunsen burner.

Before and after. The experiment was a success.

Science Club Friday Enrichment

Today we went to the sensory garden and collected lots of leaves. We compared thier textures, colours and sizes, then we used the iPads to search for some ideas so we could make the leaves into art. We hope you like it.

Science The Bubonic Plague

Today in our microbes and disease unit we learned about the bacteria that caused the bubonic plague and looked at some of the symptoms.

We made a bubo, which is a large, painful sore that grew on plague victims.

Custard (pus) was injected into a jam (blood) doughnut and black food colouring (crust) was spread on top.

The doughnut was placed into a microwave for 30 seconds. Then we sliced it open.

We recorded our findings and labelled a bubo.

Despite the gore, it didn’t put 8E off eating them!

Science club

Today we had a special guest, Kirsty, from Durham University come and speak to science club about The Bodies of Evidence Exhibtion which is currently at Palace Green Library in Durham.

We went outside and looked at a timeline so we could see when events took place.

Oliver Cromwell made an appearance…

…so did Charles the First.

And General David Leslie popped in to say hello too!

We learned about the Scottish and English and how Charles the First lost his head!

We learned that the English and Scottish sometimes didn’t get on and learned about the Battle of Dunbar. Over 3000 Scottish prisoners were matched from Dunbar to Durham Cathedral. In 2013 some of their bodies were found buried under where the Palace Green Library cafe is.

We learned some of the techniques used to identify them.

  
We learned you can reconstruct a face from a skull and had a go!

8E Germ hunters

8E are presently covering the ‘Microbes and Disease’ unit. Today we explored where we thought the most microbes would reside around school and conducted an experiment to see if our predictions were correct.

We rubbed sliced potato where we thought the most microbes would be growing. We kept one potato as a control, this one was just sliced and put in a bag.

We wore gloves to keep us safe and so we didn’t contaminate the potato with any microbes that were already on our hands.

Then we got to work!

 We put the potato in labelled plastic food bags to keep the microbes in a controlled environment and to avoid contamination.

 We placed the sealed bags in a warm dark cupboard, this will help any microbes thrive. We will check them next week.

9W Science

This week we have been exploring how different seeds are dispersed. We looked at seeds that are dispersed by wind and tested them by dropping them on a breezy day.

We looked at little seeds in berries that could be eaten by birds and then dispersed when they go to the toilet. Hopefully not on our heads!

We looked at seeds that roll away from thier parent plant and compared thier textures on the inside and the outside.

We compared their sizes.

9W Science

Today we made the main parts of a flower out of modelling plastercene. We all could name the flower, stem, leaf and roots.

Year 10 Science: Flame tests

As part of their OCR Entry Level Award our students are assessed on their practical skills. Today we conducted the flame test investigation.

8W Science

This week 8W have been working on our measuring skills. We spent one lesson measuring water and using pippettes.

  
Today we used our skills to measure water that we boiled, using science apparatus. Some of us used a thermometer to measure the temperature. We wrote a risk assessment to help us stay safe.

7E Science: Night and day

This half of the term we will be exploring space. Today we looked at how night and days occurs.

We inflated a balloon and stuck a cut out image of Australia on it, we used a globe to make sure we put it in the right place!

We then used string to carefully hang the balloon, which acted as Earth, from the ceiling.

We used a torch to act as the sun and rotated the ‘Earth’ so the sun would show midnight, midday, sunset and sunrise in Australia.

  
Next lesson we are going to look at phases of the moon.