Saturday, February 16, 2013

Science Fair

We were asked a few weeks ago to present an experiment to the school children in School 4. At first we had about 3 idea to go with which were:
 a) Making an egg float
b) An imploding coca cola can
c) a balloon filled with water that cannot be burned.
Unfortunately,it was decided that these were not really appropriate so we went with Mr. Gray's idea of 'composite materials' which required the children to build a bridge out of spaghetti and marshmallows . We were allocated to the year group 5 and we planned on giving them a small presentation which would be fun but at the same time informative about composite materials. We made sure the presentation was short so that then we could divide the kids into groups of 3 so that they could begin their bridge-making. We turned it into a game where the children were provided with 15 pieces of marshmallow, a handful of spaghetti and 200 US dollars (the money was fake of course). The point of the game was to create a bridge that could be stable enough to hold the 4 mini animals that were given -an elephant,a rhino,a gorilla and a monkey between to books .The team that could achieve this would win chocolate and the fake money.
We had everything prepared on Thursday including the marshmallows and the spaghetti and rewards.  But unfortunately,on Friday when we came back to school in the morning the package was missing. So we had to pass by the store on the way to restock (Thank you Mr. Mase!)
When we arrived at the school we were given pretty clear and simple instructions as to where each group was to be taught and at what times. Year 3-6 were all in the hall. Overall,everything went better than expected except for the small things like we did not have enough time to set up our stations and it was hard and sticky to clean up after the children.
In conclusion,if there is to be a next time,we will keep our ingredients in sight at ALL times and we will perhaps demonstrate in greater depth about what is to be done with the pictures.

P.S pictures will be uploaded as soon as the email is delivered)

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