At Heathhall Primary School in P7 we have been taking Glasgow science lessons over the past 8 weeks. We have been learning about lots of different gases like coal, oil and wood. Today, we all met Ross from the videos and Ailean. Both of them came all the way from Glasgow to come meet us. To start off with they were talking about fire and how the fuels burn to create energy. As an experiment they used some sort of toxic liquid called methanol and poured some in a clear bowl. Once Ailean had poured it in, she lit a match and threw it in. The combination between fire and methanol created a mini fire explosion. The bottom of the fire was blue and the top was orange/ red. After the small bowl Ailean upgraded to a gallon bottle and it made a massive explosion. The next experiment she showed us was on solar panel cars. CJ and Nathan had a torch and a car, on each side there was a car track. They had to shine the light on top of the car where the solar panel sat to make it move. In the end Nathan’s side won and cheered. After the car race she got one volunteer to come to the front and help her. Finlay had to drop a ball in a box on top of lots of mouse traps with ping pong balls. As a result all the balls went flying across the clear box until it settled down after a couple of seconds. This showed us a nuclear reaction. Last but not least Anya had to spin a handle to separate water and fuel oils to make a rocket take off. It looked like it was hard work because it was a stiff handle, and she had to spin it for a long time.
After the descriptive show we were allowed to try out all of the experiments in a group of three. I got grouped with Ria and Jess! When we were going around everything I liked this one activity where you had to spin a stiff handle for as long as possible to power the town. I got to the power of 30 but that was not the top score. Mrs Brown gave it a try and got a high score of 55 but not for long. Wilson gave it a try for one last time and bet all of us with the score of over 60!
The class really enjoyed the visit from the Science Centre and learned lots about how we need to power the future!
By Isla
