Science, Technology, and Engineering

Communicating with the Specialist Team

We look forward to partnering with you in 2023, and welcome your input:

Hayley Oliver (Science, Technology, and Engineering)  Hayley.Oliver@education.vic.gov.au

What a BLAST we have had in Science lately! 

Grade 3/4s

The Grade 3/4s have proved that they know how to make a good package and keep a fragile gift (a raw egg) safe. In small groups the students designed a cost effective, environmentally friendly package, for an egg to go in. The then had to drop their package from three different heights: 15cm, 50cm and 1m. If their egg survived they could choose to participate in the MEGA drop! Overall, we had about 6 surviving eggs! The students all agreed that plastic is the strongest material, but not cost effective or environmentally friendly! So this week we are attempting to make Casein plastic, that’s plastic made from MILK! 

Grade 5/6s

The Grade 5/6s finished looking at the properties of gas and how they behave when mixed with other ingredients with a bang, literally!! We had so much fun testing our rocket launchpads and seeing what would happen to our rockets when we combined bicarb soda and vinegar with Carbon Dioxide. 

Our last two lessons we have been looking at the properties of solids and liquids. We combined oil, water and food colouring to make fireworks in a jar. All the students were keen to see the water and oil separate, and the food colouring move through the two liquids. This week we had a go at making slime/putty, which was very messy!! After playing with our putty slime, we talked about how there are some substances, such as slime and oobleck, that have the properties of both solids and liquids and are therefore called a non-Newtonian fluid. 

We have had such a busy and fun first term!!