Science Week in Year 5
We were very lucky to be invited to visit Casterton College for their ‘Inspiring Scientists’ Day. We were one of 6 other schools there and visited many of the science laboratories and classrooms.
Our first activity involved dissolving the colour shell on M&M chocolate sweets and discussing why this happens.
We then had a mystery to solve and had to use chromatography paper to help us. We found this really interesting as we discovered that different colour felt tip pens are made up of various colours. This helped us to save the crime.
Following this activity, we were treated to a visit to a mobile planetarium, where we watched a video about the new space mission: Artemis. We couldn’t take any photographs as it was very dark inside! We really enjoyed it and also finding out about previous visits to the Moon.
After lunch, we enjoyed some physics work. The Casterton teacher spoke to us about launching rockets. He challenged us to design the most effective rocket, that would travel the furthest. Until our class, the furthest distance a rocket had travelled from any other school was 96m. This was until our attempt…….
Connie and Isla-Mae’s rocket was the most successful rocket of the week! It travelled over 111metres, a distance that has never been achieved before! The teacher was most impressed and could not believe how far the rocket travelled!
We then returned to the classroom and took part in some codebreaking activities. These were a lot of fun and helped us to make sense of how we use coding nowadays when we are using our phones or paying for something online. We used the Caesar Cipher Wheel, the Polybius cipher and the PigPen Alphabet to crack some very clever codes!
We had the most wonderful day at Casterton and enjoyed making ‘connections’ with other schools and the teachers there.
