15 March 2019
The theme of water ran through a whole day of activities involving Year 5 and 6 pupils from Buckland School and the members of the weekly Primary Science Club run by ASP Science Ambassadors.
Buckland's pupils are now becoming regular visitors and this time it was to carry out an extended investigation on water purification, entitled 'Ditch the Dirt'. This is an activity designed by the education department at one of our key partner organisations, Practical Action.
The pupils carried out various investigations into the problems of obtaining clean water in developing countries and then used their new knowledge and skills to design and test their own filtration systems.
Comments from the pupils showed that they particularly enjoyed the application of science to a real world problem in this workshop.
No sooner had the lab been cleaned up, than the Primary Science Club started. This week's theme was buoyancy. After an introduction to the basic, scientific ideas the Science Ambassadors challenged the primary children to build a model boat capable of holding the largest possible mass.
Before the final testing, the children were asked to predict whether a range of items would sink or float, including fruit and Mr Simmons's famous bowling ball. The winning boat held an amazing 700g, soundly beating the Science Ambassadors' own efforts.
