Friday 13 July 2012

Wellesley's Science and Technology Fair 2012

In the last week of term two, Wellesley held its biannual school wide Science and Technology Fair.
Throughout the school, every class has been working towards our science week, culminating in an evening for parents to come along and see what their sons have been doing.

The senior school displayed their exhibits in the science and dance rooms.  All 85 exhibits had been judged and all the boys were interviewed. Then those top ones were then judged by another judge who narrowed it down to our finalists and place-getters.






Our science evening was very well attended.  Sarah Wilcox was our guest speaker and she spoke to the boys about some of the opportunities that are open to scientists.  We heard her speak about her own experiences, diving on the Great Barrier Reef, being part of the team that recently visited Antartica and the science happening on our own back door step.


Congratulations go to the following senior school boys:

3rd Place:  Ciaran Sim - Plants vs Bacteria


2nd Place:  Isaac Rusholme Cobb - Cost Effective Green Insulation


1st Place:  Harry Mills - Suar:  Is it a Drug and are we all Addicted?


Below is a picture of all of the senior finalists.  Congratulations to all of them.  This year the standard was very high and both judges commented on how much work and effort had gone into so many of the exhibits.


Parents making the most of the photo opportunity


Wednesday 11 July 2012

Listen Hear!

This term saw the Year One class exploring and investigating concepts based around the theme of sound.  They had lots of fun making their own telephone and working out what was the best way for the sound to travel along the string.




All of the boy got to play with tuning forks, water and various objects and it didn't take long for them to start talking about vibrations, sound travelling and 'wigglying sounds'.

Friday 6 July 2012

Year Six Kitchen Chemistry

Year Six went on an exciting trip to a couple of different science venues in our local community.  It was great to see the boys really excited about what they saw.  They loved telling me about the wind tunnel and looking through high powered microscopes.
Following on from their visit, we completed some very hands on activities exploring science in our own kitchen.  Using our own home-made indicator from red cabbage, boys found out about acids and bases.  They also got to explore different ways to separate mixtures by filtering, evaporation and using magnets.


It was a great opportunity for both classes to complete some experiments using equipment.  I think many of the boys really thought they were doing 'real' science when they got to use the spirit burners and test tubes!
Of course, we had to end the unit with some taste testing in our kitchen chemistry unit.  Making Sherbet Fizz proved to be a hit, although I think the boys, going by their expressions, found tasting the tartaric acid rather sour!

Year Two's Physical World

Throughout term two, the junior school has been exploring some physical world units.  Year Two completed an investigation into light and colour.  Boys bought along to school their own torches and we had lots of fun making the classroom dark so that we could explore light.  We talked about where light comes from, how it travels and then we did lots of activities with our torches.
 The year 2 class explored a range of materials to see if they were opaque, transparent or translucent.  They were then able to sort their objects into appropriate groups.

By far the most fun was making shadows and exploring how to make them bigger and smaller.  We even went outside and the boys paired up and drew around their own shadows.


Year Two had lots of fun exploring with magnifying glasses, we looked at the shape of different lenses and what happens when we put them close to our eyes, further away.  We talked about how useful magnifiers are and what people might use them for.