Today MA1 had our first science workshop which was really enjoyable. Science is a subject which I, and many others in the class feel slightly nervous about teaching as it is not a subject that I took a large amount of interest in throughout my time at school. I realised that there is such a vast range of subjects that science could cover and I think it’ll be a really fun and interesting topic to teach children.

For today’s workshop we were asked to prepare a short presentation to share with  a peer in the class in order to have a think about different experiments that we could use with a class in placement or with our own classes in the future. I chose to carry out an experiment called “Raining Blood.” This involved mixing vegetable oil with food colouring, and then pouring this mixture into a jar of water. The coloured oil created a layer on top of the water and then droplets of coloured oil sank to the bottom of the jar. This happens because the molecules of oil are heavier than those of water and therefore sink through the water. Then droplets of oil start to move back up to the layer above the water because the oil and colouring molecules begin to separate.

My experiment did not turn out as well as I’d hoped as the water changed colour much more quickly than it was supposed to but I think this was because I used too much colouring compared to the amount of oil and this is something I would need to be more careful of if I were to carry out the experiment again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU_ovHrgBkY