British Science week is a 10 day celebration of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths and takes place between the 7th and the 16th March 2025. On 13th March the Science team took Y7 and Y8 students to visit the Cambridge Science centre on the Science Park, Milton Road.
Students completed a one-hour workshop on ballistics, using a piece of equipment that should change the launch angle of a ball bearing, and special paper which was marked where the ball bearing landed. After a briefing the students had to work out which angle of launch made the ball bearing travel farthest. There was then a challenge in which students could select a distance at which they could reliably land their ball bearing, and compete against other groups to hit a target on a mat at the given distance.
Students also spent time in a large area filled will all sorts of interactive equipment. They designed paper models to fly, based around seed heads; You could build a robot that moved. There was a system which used air to move a ball through a series of hoops which was really tricky and a bit like playing quidditch. Lots of students loved building different arrangements of tubes and channels to make ping pong balls move across a magnetic board. They also loved playing with the gravity well, which demonstrates how planetary orbits work.
Here’s some Y8 Feedback on the trip
It was really, really, fun. It was great to have an opportunity to have so many hands-on experiences like that as it doesn’t feel like learning but you are learning. The workshop on ballistics was great as it linked to forces which we learned about, but this took it to another level. (Felicity)
It was really good fun. (Natalie)
I made robots. It needed lots of creativity and problem solving. The values kept changing so I had to keep rearranging my blocks, but it was great when the robot moved and the light came on. (Noah F)
It was very educational. There was one activity where there was a plastic tube shaped like a funnel (gravity well) and you had to throw balls into it. If you spun the balls around the outside faster it would spiral into the middle and the funnel at a slower pace. If you put the ball in lower, it lost energy faster. (Sachin)
It was really fun and very educational. I really liked the architecture stuff and built a bridge using magnets and sticks. (Dylan)
On Monday 17th March we will close Science week with a talk on traumatic brain injury (it is also Brain injury awareness month) by our colleague, Luke. Then there will be a science themed “treasure hunt” with prizes for the first students to solve it.
