Thursday 19 May 2016

A Punch to the BrainSTEM

t-shirt legend fail engrish
This was a much more energetic STEM study day. We walked miles and miles to the Girl's school with the big stage from a previous visit. It's just next to the church where we have the May Fayre and laser-stalk each other.
This was to see and use their new super laboratory so we had to wear aprons and safety specs of gigantic proportions still with bits of girlie hair attached. If you didn't wear the safety gear or could not stand up under its weight, you were out!
First the teacher lit a standard Bunsen burner and blew some custard powder near it. A huge roaring flame seared its way into the ceiling and our imaginations.
portsmouth city girls school science labIf any parent loses custard powder or deodorants tonight, it's because one of us is looking for a Bunsen burner. Then we suspended weights of various sizes in the middle of a strawberry whip and saw how long it took to rupture. The strawberry laces experienced catastrophic failure much earlier, for they are thinner.
Then we burnt stuff again, because uncontrolled oxidation is top of every boys' list. This time we burnt crisps of various sizes under a test tube with 25ml of water in it and saw what temperature rise it achieved before the fuel ran out: Monster Munch was the winner. And dipping a taper into a special chemical, we made sparklers! I had to dunk mine in the safety water when it wouldn't go out.
In PE I scored a home run using Gene's lucky bat, and in swimming I completed an underwater length twice, only 1 other person managed 1.

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