Science Festival at Imperial College

On Thursday 21st January fourteen Year 9 students accompanied Connaught's Science Subject Leader, Mr Patterson, Science Festival at Imperial College London. The festival was run by a company called 'Exscitech' who aim to encourage Science amongst young people.

The event involved Connaught Students working in teams with other Waltham Forest Year 9 students, solving scientific problems and observing unusual demonstrations that are not easy to show im mainstream secondary schools.

Mr Patterson accompanied one of the groups as they made their way around the activities during the day opening with a Chemistry activity where students had to make their own chemical indicator using red cabbage. The students then handled solid carbon dioxide before observing some rather pretty flowers being shattered by liquid nitrogen! At the Biology lab, Strawberry DNA was extracted, along with working out the blood type of selected samples.

After lunch, the group had to build a paper bridge, enforcing the Physical concept of Forces, needing to hold up as many bottles of water as possible. Maybe the girls needed to study Geological tunnelling instead at this point! The final activity was Astronomical, where the girls had to make a spectroscope, showing the difference between the observed spectrum of visible light and that given off by a mercury lamp!

The concepts learned or enforced during the day were first class, and the demonstrations observed by the whole cohort were fascinating - making smoke rings, sound-shattering wine glasses and passing electricity through the whole group in one go!

Mr Patterson complimented and thanked the staff and students at the college for such a great day. Mr Patterson remarked that "the girls were an absolute joy to be with, and displayed the type of behaviour and academic discipline which became the envy of the other schools taking part, showing pride in wearing the Connaught uniform."