Oundle Science Day
On Thursday 14th June 6, pupils from year 5 and 6 went to Oundle school for a science fair. We had 4 sessions there, all relating to science.
On Thursday 14th June 6, pupils from year 5 and 6 went to Oundle school for a science fair. We had 4 sessions there, all relating to science.
Our first session was Physics, where we learnt that the only fabric in the world that could conduct electricity is Lycra (Lycra is in leggings). We learnt about liquid nitrogen that is at a very low temperature when it is a liquid state. Did you know when you add warm water to dry ice, washing up liquid it will turn into cold bubbly gas? If you use a special machine, you can also make magnetic levitation.
Our second lesson was Biology, we learnt that DNA stands for Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid. As we were learning about DNA, we took a sample of our very own DNA. Here’s how we made it:
We put distilled water in our mouths then we chewed the inside of our cheeks for 30 seconds. We put some lysis buffer into the tube of water which we spat into. Then, instead of shaking it, we gently inverted it 5 times. After that, we added 5 drops of protease into the water and lysis buffer. We then inverted 5 times again. After that, we put it in the incubator for 10 minutes. Then we added ice cold alcohol into the tube. We left it to rest for 5 minutes. After the wait, we saw some of our DNA in the water. Then we coloured it either blue, red, green or yellow.
While we were waiting for 10 minutes, we learnt that scientists took the DNA from a 42,000-year-old mammoth which was frozen as it was in Siberia (which was very cold) and they implanted it into a modern elephant. Hopefully, it will lay a mammoth egg and if it works we could bring back any animal.
Our third lesson was DET, which stands for design, engineering and technology. In this session we had to program a robot arm. We had to try and move a ping pong ball and make it hit a target. It was much more difficult then it first looked. Our last session was chemistry. It was amazing to see how different types of liquids reacted when you mix them together.
Overall it was amazing experience and we felt so lucky to have the opportunity to try all these new things. Why not take a look at our photo gallery?