Over the past few weeks we have been looking at light and it’s properties. We are rounding up the topic with two activities.

1. Making a periscope. These were critical pieces of kit back in WW1 and WW2 to look over the trenches at the enemy. They use reflection to bounce the light to a level which keeps soldiers safe. The children used two mirrors and a cut out to create their own.

2. Making a UV light. The children created a UV light using blue/purple pen to cover their phone light. They then created patterns with highlighters and used their UV lights to make them glow in the dark. This shows that there are still wavelengths of light that are visible in UV light. Which highlighter colour glows the brightest?  (ARTICLE 28)

This weeks science involves the act of refraction. P7 have built on their knowledge of refraction and how light changes speed (and direction) as it goes into a more dense medium.

We shone our torches into water to observe the light being split into the different spectrum. P7s discovered that this happens when the different wavelengths of light change direction at different angles and we see the spectrum of light.

Finally we reverse the process by colouring in a wheel and spinning it to put the light back into white light.  (ARTICLE 28)

Magic mirror, on the wall. Who is the fairest of them all?

Continuing with our theme of light, we are investigating the effects of reflection and refraction. Reflection is when light bounces off a surface at the same angle at which it arrived at the surface. These are called angle of incidence and angle of reflection.

Refraction happens when light passes through something more dense than air and slows down. This causes it to change direction. This is why things seem reversed or disjointed.

P7 drew diagrams of what they saw and next week we will look at rainbows.  (ARTICLE 28)

This week we are looking at the human eye and it’s features as part of our light topic. We discovered that the human eye is able to reduce or increase  the amount of light that enters it. It does this using the iris. We also found out that the image flips upside down and the brain has to turn it back again. how clever!
In addition we used a simple trick to find our blind spot in our eye!
Next week we’ll look at refraction using water!

All the hard work has finished. Now the big test; to see if our boats are sea worthy. P7 have tried their best to make the boats out of the most buoyant material and add buoyancy by trapping air inside them. We will test them initially to see if they float but then leave them for an extended period of time to find out if they are able to withstand the seven seas!

Let’s see how many are still buoyant tomorrow.

This week the P7s have been building their boats which they designed. The theme of this experiment is buoyancy. We have learned that buoyancy is an upwards force which is the opposite of gravity. How buoyant something is is not to do with the weight of something, but how dense the material it is made of is.
With this experiment the children have been given a set range of materials and they have to build a vessel which is buoyant and can then hold a load.

Let’s see who can stay buoyant the longest!

As the summer nears,P6 we’re out busy planting some trees which will hopefully grow over the summer. Using some shovels, tree saplings and  muscle power, the class planted the new trees up at the top of the hill in the playgrounds. Keep an eye out for them blooming!