Term 2 Week 5 2021

Science students have been working hard this term. It has been lovely to see them settling into the school year and developing friendships and positive partnerships resulting in constructive outcomes seen during science practicals. The Foxwell SPIRIT value of teamwork has been shining through with students honing their communication and negotiating skills when determining the roles each will take during the practicals.

Year 7 have been learning about substances and mixtures this term; how different separation techniques can be used to create substances and mixtures that can be used for industry or at home.

Students have gained an understanding how our knowledge regarding substances has changed over time learning how different cultures used separation techniques in daily life, such as, hand-separating seeds and grains from the non-edible portions, to grind these into flours for food and how industrial processes have made these processes more efficient. There was a hand-picking of mixtures practical that was timed which showed how long it takes and how ineffective this method is with substances. Most groups were not able to separate all substances and if they did, it took such a long time!

The UN Global Goals sets out to achieve a better and more sustainable future with one focus being clean water and sanitation and this was part of the focus for Foxwell students during the term. They looked at grey-water and ways to separate this mixture to produce clean water. Water is necessary for life and is a finite resource. With rising populations throughout the world it is becoming necessary to reduce and recycle water waste and a practical using different separation techniques helped students work out ways to effectively make grey-water cleaner.

Year 8 students have soooo much energy and they have been using this in Term 2 to understand the different forms that energy takes, energy transformation, energy efficiency, and using technology in finding solutions to our  current world-wide energy crisis.

They began by undertaking a simple collaborative experiment that showed them the many different forms of energy such as, kinetic, potential, sound and heat by using a bouncy ball and recording information and using this experimental data to look at energy transformations.

There was also another fun experiment which students participated in where they were looking to understand stored energy in food. The body converts the chemical energy in food into chemical energy that your body can use to function and students burned food (scientifically, of course) to visualise this process of transformation and used maths to calculate and determine the energy in the food they burned. This Calorimetry practical really needed cooperation between team members as this was a much more complex practical than the bouncy ball experiment but you can see by the photos that it was successful.