Who can believe it is Week 9 of Term 4???

Years 7 & 8

What a massive and slimy end to the year. All classes have been making 3 different types of slime. Please don’t try this at home, it’s messy! They have also had an opportunity to develop their fire skills to procure their Bunsen burner licence, as well as catapulting plastic balls across the room using their catapult designs. They researched to determine what type of designs might be the most effective at catapulting the plastic ball and then built their chosen design. Some designs enabled the ball to fly through the room and across the vast expanse; some didn’t.

Which ones were successful? Denver needs some thinking time…

Students have also made personalised versions of a board game using local information on each of their boards.

ALP

Students have completed building their fantastic bridges and it appears we might have a few engineers in the mix. The students also stood up in front of their peers and teachers and discussed their design and build process. I am sure the public speaking was nerve-racking but you couldn’t tell as they all gave such a stellar performance.

We have had some absolutely bridge brilliant designs. I have included a few of these so you can decide which ones on which you would be willing to drive your SUV.

This bridge took 20kg of weight before spectacularly toppling, although the bridge remained intact.

Some other examples of the bridges which fit the design brief are below and the bridge designed and built by the girls withstood 31.5 kg of weight without falling down.

G STEM

Students made rockets with fizzy drink and Mentos. A few photos reveal the dedicated students who braved the weather.

NOTE: the images are distant as the photographer was not so brave and remained under shelter.

Students were supported at the Wonder of Science state finals last week by their fabulous teachers, Ms Jones, Mrs Moraes and Ms McClymont and then Year 8s were fortunate to meet with Dr Margaret Wegener and Professor Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop as well as continuing discussions with a range of WOS mentors at the University of Queensland.

Interesting fact

-The clean-burning Bunsen burners were named after Robert Bunsen. He developed this burner and we still use these in science labs worldwide.

Some of other things that he achieved during his life. He:

-was awarded his PhD in chemistry when he was just 19 years old.

-discovered the antidote to arsenic in 1834 (with Arnold Berthold).

-invented the zinc-carbon battery.

-invented flash photography.

-showed how geysers function.

-invented spectroscopy and used this to discover the elements cesium and rubidium (with Gustav Kirchhoff).