Let’s be honest, everybody has suffered from anxiety at one point or another in their lifetime, whether it be education linked or not. It is a constant battle that we have to put up with, and is scary and unpleasant enough as it is, and not knowing how to understand, deal or cope with it makes it one hundred times worse. However, I really admire Richard for using his first workshop with us to help us tackle our fear – teaching a science lesson.

When I first read Richard’s email telling us that we had to prepare a two-minute science experiment, I’m not going to lie, I panicked. So many questions ran through my head and it got a little overwhelming for the first thirty seconds but then I realised that every other student in my year was in the same position, and there was no point fretting cause we all felt the same.

Considering I took science for all six of my school years at secondary, I really shouldn’t have felt the way I felt. I was never out of the science department, yet it felt like a foreign language when I sat down to decide what I was going to do. I decided to reflect on these years in science and tried to remember any simple experiments that I once participated in and memories of my third year standard grade biology class were most prominent. I had a great biology teacher. She was young and new to the school, and was so interested and engaged in every single one of us in the class. She had a new burst of energy which we all needed, and made the most boring topics exciting. I got on really well with her and was sad to see her leave at the end of the year.

The experiment I chose to demonstrate was one I did in S3, and it involved milk, washing up liquid and food colouring. It was a representation of the digestive system and how bile (washing up liquid) breaks down fat (milk). It separates the fat globules into smaller chunks so it is easier for the enzyme lipase to break down.

It is a really basic experiment. About a centimetre of whole fat milk on a dish. A drop of food colouring in four different colours in the centre of the dish. Then a drop of washing up liquid to the centre.

Before:       During:     

After:    

Basically, the soap reduces the surface tension of the milk by dissolving the fat molecules like i mentioned before. The surface of the milk OUTSIDE the soap that was placed in the centre has a HIGHER surface tension so it repels the soap

To be fair, mine was not as glamorous as I remember it should have been, but it filled me with the confidence I needed and I now know that with a little prep, you can do anything you put your mind to. So thank you, Richard, for taking away my fear of teaching a science lesson, and it was a great way to start off the new semester! It really isn’t all that bad after all!