Science Week

The theme for this year's Science Week around Australia was glass and students at Cheltenham explored some fun aspects of the use of glass. 

What is an Optical Fibre.....? Year 7 and 8 students investigated fibre making with glue guns to see how they could make the longest fibre. Even Jelly could make an optical fibre, and students used laser pens and layers of jelly to understand how real optical fibres worked before comparing them with the real thing. 

Year 9 students made incandescent light bulbs using just the refills from a mechanical pencil lead and a few wires.  This tied in nicely with their current unit on Electricity and provided "íllumination" to their understanding of current and resistance. 

Ever wonder why your touchscreen works for fingers but not gloves? Year 10 students explored this idea by working out what fruits and vegetables could be used as Tools for Touchscreens.  And the result...fruits and vegetables such as bananas, carrots, oranges and tomatoes (plus more) will work because most touch screens require a small electric signal to pass through whatever is touching it to actually register a touch. This means that conductive, skin-like materials will work, however hard plastic or wood or other items of the sort will not conduct the electricity and therefore won't register it as 'touching' the screen.

This week the local library at Cheltenham also played host to Glass Science themes, you might like to check this out.