Abingdon News No.53

4 April 2020 Abingdon News School’s Mace Debating James Gibson and Johan Nerlov took part in the School’s Mace Debating Championship’s Regional Heat and, together with St Helen’s, were one of the two teams to make it through to the Regional Finals. The boys said it was a real pleasure and challenge to debate in favour of giving STEM a greater place in our curriculum. Investigating the circulatory system Boys in Lower School Science Club investigated the circulatory system by building cubes to represent volumes of 20L, 50L, 150L and 7000L to help visualise how much blood is pumped by the human heart every day. Everyone was surprised to discover that your body pumps around 7000L of blood a day - the volume of the largest cube! Russian History Students enjoyed expert insight into Russian history with a superb lecture on Terror in Russia from 1855-1953 by Mr Nicholas Kinloch, (pictured). Sixth form historians were also treated to a live video chat with Professor Orlando Figes who fielded their questions about Russian history. Figes is probably the eminent Russian historian of recent times, authoring books such as A Peoples’ Tragedy, Natasha’s Dance and The Whisperers. Prodrive Fourth years enjoyed a fascinating tour of the Prodrive factory in Banbury where they saw iconic cars including a rally Porsche, Colin McRae’s classic Subaru Impreza and Aston Martins being prepared for Motorsport. The boys were also shown the new hydraulics and wing system for a new (secret) hypercar. The boys learnt how engineers work as teams to maximise achievement and all about the sustainability of the company. The factory, when built, had the largest solar panel roof in Europe and their dynamometer, which measures the power output of the test engines, runs a generator which feeds into the National Grid.