Terrific Scientific goes live
Today BBC Learning, in partnership with Wellcome, launches Terrific Scientific, a bold and ambitious new campaign to inspire primary children to get excited about science.
Terrific Scientific is a major 18 month UK-wide campaign to bring practical science into the classroom and into our homes. Instead of lab coats and test tubes, the campaign will urge pupils, teachers and parents across the UK to grab lemons, leaves, tap water and other everyday items to join in with exciting and accessible mass-participation investigations.
Aimed at upper primary school level, Terrific Scientific will help deliver the objectives of the science curriculum for 9-11 year olds across the UK.
Throughout the campaign, BBC Learning will provide a range of teaching resources online to support each investigation. In partnership with Wellcome the BBC will also send every primary school in the UK a box of materials to aid teachers in carrying out the investigations.
Live lessons
We’re specifically supporting the second experiment in the series, which will go out in February next year. That looks at the fascinating phenomenon known as the Mpemba Effect, where hot water freezes more quickly than cold. We’ve been helping to develop the structure of the lesson and the scientific procedures, alongside colleagues at PSQM.
Also in February, the Terrific Scientific team will launch a unique, interactive map of the UK, enabling schools to upload their results from each of the scientific investigations and then compare and contrast them with other schools across the UK.
Using state-of-the art graphics and data-visualisation, the Terrific Scientific Map will help to create a sense of being part of a scientific community and ensure children develop their scientific enquiry skills – a key part of the science curriculum.
In an innovative partnership, each investigation will also feed into real research being conducted by some of the UK’s leading universities, giving children a sense of purpose for their scientific enquiry. Following the Mpemba Effect live lesson, Southampton University will conduct the research, looking at whether water hardness affects freezing rate.
Our Mpemba Effect competition
In 2012 we ran a competition to look for the best and most creative explanation as to why this counterintuitive phenomenon occurs.
We received an incredible 22,000 entries to the competition, from 120 countries. These were then whittled down to just 11 finalists by a panel of expert judges and a public vote.
The winner of the competition was Nikola Bregovic, a research assistant in physical chemistry at the University of Zagreb, in Croatia.
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