Science Week

This month we celebrated science week with a series of activities exploring chemistry, physics and biology. The activities looked at decoding God’s design through scientific exploration including a periodic table scavenger hunt, static electricity with the van de Graaff machine and spirals and symmetry in nature. Students enjoyed creating electric sparks, observing symmetry through vegetable prints, looking through the microscopes, identifying differences in bugs and releasing balloon rockets. 

On Tuesday, the Year 8 students watched their scientific investigation videos prepared for the ThinkScience! competition.  In groups, students had completed an experiment of their choice and prepared a vide of the experiments, results and evaluation. The best videos were entered into a national competition run by ANSTO (Australia Nuclear, Science and Technology Organisation). Two of our Year 8 teams in the ThinkScience! Competition placed in the top 4 in the country. The first team consisting of Gabriel Noa, Noah Nelson and Levi Utley achieved a highly commended for their video on “How liquids change in temperature when energy is applied?”. Sam Chu, Caleb Charles, Angela Ragesh and Gabrielle Thomson were awarded second place with their investigation on Water Wheel Efficiency. A huge congratulations to both teams on the work they have put into this competition. 

As part of their classification unit in Year 7 Science, students visited the Moonlit Sanctuary. During this excursion they observed mammalia, aves and reptilia. Students were able to observe and identify similarities and differences between species. The students enjoyed feeding the wallabies, finding the scientific names for animals and the reptiles were met with a mix of joy and fear.  It was a beautiful day to explore God’s creation. 

The Year 11 Physics class went go-karting to apply the concepts of motion in a real world context. The students heard about the safety processes to maintain the karts and the trialling of new technology to decrease the lap time.  The students put all their knowledge to the test as they competed to complete a lap in under 40 seconds. They had lots of fun in the process and came close with the fastest lap time of 40.134 seconds.  

These below photos were taken on Friday, the last day of science week, as we looked at biology and chemistry. The theme was God’s Design in Nature, with a special focus on the Fibonacci Sequence. This is a mathematical pattern that shows up time and time again in the natural world. We also looked at rainbows, or spectrums, demonstrating the range of colours of acids and alkalines with Universal Indicator solution.

Lisa Thomson        Sarah Bergen

Science Teacher  Science Technician