SCIENCE

NATIONAL SCIENCE WEEK (12 – 16 AUGUST 2019)

National Science Week is a collection of events large and small staged by individuals and organisations that when, taken together, make up one of Australia’s largest festivals. This year two anniversaries dominated the celebrations across Australia. It is 50 years, this year, since the Apollo 11 mission first placed men on the Moon. It is also the 150th anniversary of the development of the Periodic Law of the Elements independently by Dmitri Mendeleev and Lothar Meyer.

This year, at McKinnon Secondary College, the students celebrated in a number of ways. They participated in class competitions which involved experimental demonstrations and problem solving; many classes were challenged to build a lunar rover. All Year 8 students were involved in Science Survivor and all Year 9 students completed the Plank Engineering challenge run by the Green Hat Workshop. The Year 7 students had the opportunity to learn about the importance of habit for Australian Animals. Each class attended a workshop run by Dyllan from Wildlife Sidekicks. The students met a number of animals who need tree hollows to survive including two beautiful Eclectus Parrots and a tiger quoll.

All students were invited to send a pringle through the post in a competition where the challenge was for the pringle to arrive at school unbroken. In another competition, students sent in poems about elements in the periodic table.

During lunchtimes students:

• blew bubbles in the courtyard;
• from Year 12 Physics judged medieval machines made by our talented Year 7 students;
• viewed the award winning films from the 2019 Scinema International Science Film Festival;
• participated in a Periodic Table quiz challenge;
• experienced Oculus Rift; and
• participated in a robotics workshop.

Winners to all of the competitions will be announced in due course.

Below is one of the terrific entries for the element poetry competition by Erisha Tayal, Year 11L.

Therese Sweeney 

Science KLA Manager 

LEAD

Here, cradled within earthly palms, I lie waiting.

Buried as Galena, I am unrushed by the appeal of time;

still amongst chaos, the rise and fall, from peasant to prime.

Finally I am jarred, dislodged from the womb by creatures that read.

Under their beady eyes, I glow a cold blue, a cold hue, tempting their greed. 

Placing my hefty weight in rattling freights, I lie waiting.

I am caressed by the frugal alchemist hoping for gleaming gold,

I am moulded by the Roman plumber into a web under his empire bold,

I am grasped by hungry hands of scholars, gliding across their pages,

I am mixed by artists into paints that coat the innards of their stages.

In the paint I reside, eggshell-white, waiting.

A chubby cherub plays with his toys amongst sweet flaking walls.

Flakes that travel from the polished floors, to fist, to his mouth small.

Flakes that accumulate, over the tide of time, into his blood;

blood that flows warm and ruby rich, supplying life, allowing him to bud.

Poisoned, black blood, in which I lie waiting. 

A damaged brain lays his body to the ground, 

sickly and stark.

Here I lie, waiting no longer.

Erisha Tayal

 Year 11L