SCIENCE WEEK!
Starting on Friday the 3rd of February, the whole of Catsfield School took part in a Tim Peake inspired Science Week all about space!
First of all, we all had a visit from Doctor Durkin (a science teacher in St. Richards). She showed us why we were doing the special week: it was part of a nationwide event about space. We started off by getting into our groups which consisted of people from lots of differentages (our team groups) and heading over to our first activity (there were three). One of them involved trying to make a rainbow using a white light source and a couple of triangular prisms. We had to try and make the light split into the seven different colours that make up the rainbow. Almost everyone managed to do it without much help!
After that, we swapped around to a different experiment. During this one, we were looking at the UV light in our atmosphere. To do this, we put some beads into the sun and timed how long it took to make all the beads change colours. Then we tried putting things on top of the beads to see if it would have an effect on how fast the beads would change.
Finally, we had to decide what five things we would take to space. But there was a catch! We were only allowed to take five things up to the mass of 1.5 kg. there was a sheet with different things and their masses to help us work out how heavy things were.
On Monday, we started a new system: there were four different activities for us to do and we did one on each day.
To start with, we had an activity where we designed and made a Mars drone lander! We even tested them outside by putting eggs inside and throwing them up in the air. If they landed safely, then the lander had worked effectively, if not, we had to try again until we got it correct. It was really good because we got to do lots of modelling and get very hands on. We did this so that we would get an idea of how hard it is to get a drone to land on Mars.
Next, we did the agility astro course (a course which astronauts take to make sure they are super fit) to test our agility and reaction time. We did this by testing how many times we could do different activities (like running, throwing, dribbling a ball and jumping) in the space of two minutes. After, we had to try and see if we could improve our score the second time around. We all found out that astronauts have to be very physically fit to go into space.
To follow this, we got to learn about being hydrated in space and how you need to drink a lot in space because your body thinks that you are over hydrated. We learnt about the different things that happen if you are dehydrated and how your wee changes colour and smell. We tried to re-create the different colours of urine using fruit juices and food colouring.
Then, we did a taste test involving different types of food to see how the taste of things would change if we closed our eyes and held our noses. This was because when you go into space, it effects how and what you taste. We were very surprised to find how your taste can be effected by not being able to smell.
For our final activity, we were learning about different foods in space and how astronauts eat. We started by creating our own space meal for an astronaut to eat when they are in space. The person/ people who made the best meal will potentially get it cooked for a special treat sometime next term. After that, we made a space garden with different foods that could be grown in the ISS. Also, we planted our own vegetables for our own houses/ gardens.
On Friday, the Planetarium came in to show us all of the different things in our Solar System and Galaxy. It has been a very interesting week!
By Milo and Leah