After completing our newspaper articles about the tragic sinking of Titanic, we received feedback from a special visitor. Catherine from the Ayr Advertiser came to give her thoughts on our fantastic reports and gave us key pointers on how to make them even better. We then had the opportunity to ask her questions about her job.

If you were an engineer in Scotland what would you do?

Following our visits from two engineers Wendy Pring and Susanne McInnes, we were given the challenge of designing a product which would help ourselves or someone else. After creating our designs we wrote to an engineer to try to persuade them to build our product.

Product design.

During STEM week we enjoyed taking part in a number of exciting investigations. These included making our own teabags and toothpaste, investigating friction in the jelly and oil experiment, making a paper clip float and writing a message using invisible ink. We also investigated how our lungs work in the balloon lung experiment and observed ice melting after adding salt and food colouring.

Lilli said: “I have enjoyed making toothpaste. To begin with it looked very watery so we added more cornflour to thicken it.”

Poppy added: “I had fun making the toothpaste and learned that you need to mix together cornflour, baking soda, glycerine, peppermint essence and food colouring.”

Making Toothpaste

Heather commented: “We made a mark with a permanent marker pen on a mini whiteboard and worked hard to scrub it off with the toothpaste we had made.”

Millie explained: “My favourite experiment was making teabags because we had to test out the best material to use. We made them using pieces of material like J-cloth, kitchen towel or newspaper.”

 

 

Making Teabags

Fiona said: “I liked the invisible ink experiment. We made the ink from lemon juice and water, painted a message on a piece of paper and let it dry. The message disappeared but we could see it again when we shone a lamp on it.”

Invisible ink

Harley and Sofiye explained: ” The experiment we most liked was the one with the floating paperclip. It was really tricky to get the paper clip to float. First we filled a bowl with water, then put a piece of tissue paper on the surface of the water and placed a paperclip on top. Then we had to carefully push the tissue away with a pencil. It was amazing when the paperclip floated on its own.”

Floating Paperclip

Ben said: “I really enjoyed STEM week. My favourite experiment was the ice block melting when we added the salt and food colouring. I could see the colours spreading through the ice and could also see that the ice was cracking because of the salt.”

Melting Ice

Beth added:  “My favourite experiment was the ‘Balloon Lung’. It was easy to craft. All you had to do was cut the end off a 2 litre plastic bottle, attach a balloon to the top then cut a piece of plastic from a plastic carrier bag and attach with an elastic band to the end. When we pulled the piece of plastic the balloon started to inflate. This is like the air getting into our lungs.”

Balloon Lung

Ailidh commented: “It has been fun learning about science. I really enjoyed moving the jelly cubes with the chopsticks from one bowl to the other. Then I tried moving them when they were covered in oil which was more of a challenge.”

Jelly and Oil

Today we enjoyed a visit from Susanne McInnes who works as a Structural and Civil Engineer for CH2M in Glasgow. She told us about the job of an engineer and about many of the skills an engineer needs. Susanne also shared with us some of her recent projects such as her roof design for Sainsbury’s, Prestwick and a new building for Haymarket Station hosting a ticket office, shop and café. She was also involved in the design of Prestwick and Belmont Academies. We were pleased to have the opportunity to ask her lots of interesting questions about her job.

On Friday,  March 3,  Primary 4 embarked on an exciting adventure to the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine where we learned more about ship building in the 19th century. We had fun travelling on the train and when we arrived we were met by Claire and the staff. They gave us a guided tour around the site and on down to the river to explore the steam puffer there. Later we visited the tenement flat, owned by the museum which enabled us to see what living conditions were like for ship builders over 100  years ago.

Today was ‘World Book Day’. We had a great time dressing up as our favourite book characters, taking part in a quiz, reading stories to each other, designing book covers and swapping some of our books with others. The P7 pupils arranged a ‘Where’s Wally?’ search for all the classes which we had lots of fun taking part in.