STEM fortnight continued today with an exciting show from the Glasgow Science Centre. The show was called Future Fuels and gave whistle stop tour of alternative fuels from wind and solar to hydrogen powered vehicles.
There were lots of exciting hands on demonstrations including solar car races and generating hydrogen to fuel a rocket.
This was followed up by a visit from Tia the ethical hackers who explained all about her job as a legal hacker to improve cyber security.
Finally, in class we continued with our topic, Our Frozen Worlds, by looking at how animals have evolved adaptations to survive their harsh environment. We designed our own species using the adaptations of existing animals.
Today was the first day of our STEM Fortnight and we kicked it off in P623 with a visit from biologists from the University of Strathclyde.
They spoke to us about their research work into finding new bacteria from the seas and coastal areas, to discover new antibiotics as the ones we have discovered from the land are becoming ineffective.
They showed us how they grew bacteria in a Petri dish using agar jelly to feed and support the bacteria colonies, and we also had the chance to create our own samples.
In the afternoon, STEM fortnight was official launched with a whole school assembly with guest speaker Dr Peter Hughes OBE. He spoke to us about the importance of engineering and its application in our everyday lives.
Following on from our electrical circuit knowledge we use to construct our electric cars, a high school science teacher visited us today to teach us about batteries. However, these were not the normal sort of batteries you would think but fruit batteries.
Using a zinc and copper nail with the acid contained in the fruit, we were able to create a flow of electricity that we measure using a voltmeter.
We then carried out an experiment to find out which fruit provide d the biggest flow of electricity.
By recording the reading on the voltmeter for different fruit, we determined that apples supplied the greatest flow of electricity through our circuit.
Our topic this term is looking at the Polar Regions of our planet, looking at the people and animals that live there and comparing their environment and life with ours in Scotland.
To kick off the topic we have been looking at where the polar regions are located on the planet and finding out if we can explain this by considering the Earth’s position and relationship with our Solar System.
We were able to explain successfully why we have night and day on Earth and why the Equator is hotter than the Pole. However, we require further investigation to explain why we experience seasons on the planet and why they are opposite in the northern and southern hemispheres,
Using balls to represent the planet, pins to represent the pole, and torches to represent the Sun, we discovered that the earth orbits the Sun at a tilt of about 23 degrees explaining why the planet experiences different seasons at the same time.
Primary 6 and 7 pupils and families have be asked to donate resources to help Mearns Primary with their STEM plans for this years. We are in desperate need of resources for our Tinker Lab and for construction materials.
Tinker Lab
We need various electronic devices to allow the children to open them up and take them apart to see how they work. Understandably, anything donated cannot be returned as it will be destroyed in the process. Items required are
mobile phones
laptops
desktop computers
games consoles
game controllers
Construction material
The items we require in this section are
Lego
K’nex
Mechano
These construction resources are highly beneficial for the children’s learning in our STEM lessons and clubs. We understand that these are high value items and therefore please only donated them if you are certain that you no longer want or need them.
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