Despite the rainy weather, year 6 ventured to City of Peterborough Academy (CoPA) on Thursday the 15th of March, to participate in a ‘sensational’ science event!

First we attended a Cosmos workshop delivered by the Cambridge Science Centre. It had a range of sensational exhibits which taught us all about the senses, specifically sound, sight and touch. By visiting the stations we got to experience what we would hear if we had a cochlear implant; we experimented with beams of light and if they bend; experiment with how we feel hot and cold; making spinners to see if they hover and tested the phantom hand! 

After exploring the stations, we took our seats in the audience and watched an interactive talk delivered by Cosmos! We learnt about sound and how the ear works, by testing if sound could travel through solids and air. We then listened to a sound with a really high frequency and had to put our hand down when we could no longer hear it. All of the adults put their hands down first, this is because adults lose hearing at high frequencies!

Our final session took place in one of CoPA’s science labs. We noticed that they had stools instead of chairs, gas taps and lots of intriguing equipment. After taking our seats, we started to talk about sight and eyes and how animals and humans have evolved over time. At this point Charles Darwin was the topic of conversation and we knew lots about this, drawing on our knowledge and experiences from the previous term.

Now it was time to get practical! Using cardboard and tracing paper we created a model of one of the earliest eyes that creatures had. This eye could only distinguish between light and dark, it could not make out shapes. We then looked at a more advanced eye, a pinhole eye, which a mollusc. Molluscs are also known as living fossils as they have not changed as a species in over 400 million years – wow! After creating the pinhole eye model, we compared the difference of what we could see. This time we could see shapes and outlines. We then jumped ahead to the human eye and learnt about the significance of the lens which enables us to see in focus.

What a brilliant day experiencing sensational science at City of Peterborough academy in partnership with Cosmos! Miss Snell and Miss Greaves were so impressed with the behaviour!

To see more photos from our sensational day please click here.