Science Week

Biscuit Dunking

Along with the rest of the school, Year 5 took part in putting some biscuits to the dunking test. We worked hard to ensure the test was fair and put measures in place to ensure only one variable was changed. Year 5 had different ideas about the best methodology. Some children wanted to hold the biscuit in place, whilst others wanted to replicate the dunking action. This impacted the results as rich tea was the best in the first condition, whereas hob nob took first place when dunking. Both tests proved digestive to be the worst so we will be keeping them away from our tea in the future!

Eggcellent Eggs

Last week, we began our new science topic on living things and began by making observations about eggs. We built on that this week by taking part in an investigation over time. Firstly, we placed the eggs in vinegar and saw it dissolve the shell. As the children knew all about the membrane underneath, they knew why the egg didn’t fall apart with the shell gone. We then explored osmosis. Our now shell-less egg was put into golden syrup. This caused the liquid inside the egg to leave through the permeable membrane, as the syrup has a greater concentration of molecules. We were then able to re-plump our now shriveled egg through osmosis again by putting it into water, which we coloured. The children were fascinated to see the changes and explore why this was happening, so it made it well worth it that our classroom has smelt of vinegar and eggs this past week! Many of the children wanted to run this investigation at home. Here is a link to show you how it is done: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00b1xr5

Visitors

We were also lucky enough to have some visitors to talk about science. Fiona’s sister, Ellen, is studying osteopathy and so came to talk about bones and how she is using science in her daily life. Mrs Donatantonio also stopped by. With her job in vaccinations, her talk was particularly topical, and the children asked lots of questions about the cornoavirus.

Celebration Morning

It was lovely to see those who could join us this morning. We had a great time creating trees with paper without using any glue, clips or tape. There were some brilliant constructions.