Polar explorers at Fusion Summer Schools
175 minutes for chemistry
Oxfordshire science presenter Dr Sarah Bearchell spent her #time4chem bringing polar chemistry to primary school groups.
Wheatley is the home of our local rural secondary school. It is the hub for many activities for children from surrounding villages. Each year, the churches in the village run a free four-day Fusion Summer School for local primary school children. About 160 children of different faiths and no-faith attend. There are also youth helpers and adult helpers; all of the latter are drawn from the church community. For many families, it’s regarded as a real highlight of the summer holidays and all spaces are filled within an hour of the booking process opening.
This year's theme was “polar explorers”. Each day consisted of hymns, bible stories, games, craft and science activities. I contributed by running a day of sessions on the polar climate. In the morning, we had 45 minute workshops for 5-7, 8-9 and 10-11 year olds plus the youth team members (12-16 years). Each was tailored to age.
We began by talking about where the poles are, what they look like and why they are so cold. Then we talked about the temperatures of the poles and what you might need to wear to stay warm (definitely not a bikini!).
For the main part of the workshops we tried to get to grips with how cold it actually is. We used my dry ice workshop kit so the children could feel icy conditions in safety. We talked about how Arctic Sea smoke is formed and used similar principles to make dry ice clouds. From here we used terms including solid, liquid, gas, evaporation, condensation, vapour, carbon dioxide. The children (and adults!) were all very eager to join in with the exploration. There were great ideas for other experiments we could try – most of which were far too dangerous – but we had some great scientific discussions about why I couldn’t do them.
In the afternoon we recapped the science of what we had been doing with a main stage demonstration to all the children and adult helpers. The leader of the summer school was quite delighted to join in with the cloud production.
The sessions were universally well received, with many children citing the clouds as their favourite thing that day. Several adults stopped me to say that they had never seen anything like it before and had never thought science could be so interesting. Thank you to Fusion Summer School, I had a great time. It was an excellent way to spend #time4chem!
175 minutes for chemistry
As the oldest chemical society in the world, we celebrated our 175th anniversary in 2016. We wanted to mark this milestone by recognising the important contributions our community makes to the chemical sciences. We asked our members and supporters to dedicate 175 minutes to chemistry in 2016 and share their stories with us. We featured these stories throughout the year on our website, in print in RSC News, and on social media using #time4chem.
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