º«¹úAV goes Deep Blue
We’ve loved National Science Week at º«¹úAV, celebrating this year’s theme of ‘Deep Blue: Innovation for the future of our oceans’ with lots of fun activities.
Australia is surrounded by vast oceans, which serve as a valuable source of energy, food and economic prosperity for our country. The aim of this year’s National Science Week is to increase understanding and engagement with ocean science, and to support young people to become active in science-driven research and innovation in order to prepare them for the jobs of the future.
As part of º«¹úAV’s annual celebration of all things ‘science and technology’, our Science Department organised lots of fun challenges and activities. And for the first time, students were encouraged to compete with parents, guardians or teachers in º«¹úAV’s National Science Week challenges.
Science Week at º«¹úAV kicked off with the Scavenger Hunt challenge. Teams had to perform a series of tasks – drawing on their Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Environmental and Earth Science skills - and take a photo of each one. This included making a rain gauge to determine daily rainfall over a week and filling ice trays with tap water and boiled water to determine which one would freeze first.
For the Melting Icebergs challenge, teams had to melt an ice cube in a glass of ‘sea water’ and make appropriate observations, taking a time-lapse video of their experiment.
And for the Float your Boat challenge, teams were tasked with designing and building a boat out of a 30cm by 30cm sheet of aluminium foil, floating it in a tub of water and adding as many coins as possible to their boat without sinking it.
The final challenge, Brain Break, was a general knowledge quiz, with parents and teachers participating by Zoom. It tested everyone’s knowledge - even some of the Science Teachers! Who knew that there was a venomous primate! Who knew it was the cute-faced slow Loris! Who knew that the chemical name for caustic soda was sodium hydroxide! And who knew that the tissue that connects the tongue to the mouth is called the frenulum – not tongue tissue as one team said.
Of course, there can only be one winner… except this year, there were two winners with Ford Fantastic and Chicken Nuggets tying for first place and E=mcscary coming in third.
Across Senior School, Years 7 to 10 were also immersed in lots of fun activities during Science classes. Years 7 and 8 competed in the Young Scientist STANSW Paper Plane Competition, testing out their creations in the Big Gym. They quickly realised that paper airplanes are subject to the same laws of physics as commercial airlines, requiring the same forces of thrust, lift, drag, and gravity to take to the skies. A huge congratulation to Charlie in Year 8 who managed to get on the National Leaders Board after a tremendous effort with her plane!
The Science Department also challenged Year 7 to ‘putt’ their thinking caps on in order to design a moveable Putt-Putt course. But there was a catch! Rather than create a course so challenging that people struggled to get the ball in, the students had to come up with a design that would allow people to get a hole-in-one first time. There were lots of creative thinking, problem solving and collaboration on display in the Undercroft, where Year 7 exhibited their best Putt-Putt courses for the rest of the School to see.
Meanwhile, Year 8 got to grips with The Deep Blue Escape Room. Set in a submarine in the dark, cold waters near Antarctica, students were presented with a scenario where the submarine’s battery had failed. They had 45 minutes to complete 10 challenges and crack the code to replace the battery and return to the ocean’s surface.
This hands-on, immersive experience got Ms Quinn's Year 8's collaborating and applying scientific understanding to a series of ocean-themed challenges. Students explored everything from the history of ocean exploration, to ocean acidification, to plastic pollution and deep-sea food webs.
Year 9 were introduced to the sustainability credentials of algae, learning how algae can help to reduce the atmospheric CO2 levels. Alumna, Maddy Satterthwaite (2016py) met with the students via Zoom on Friday. Maddy is part of a team at UTS, who received a grant from the UTS Green Biotech Hub to develop a start-up utilising the climate-positive qualities of algae to drive positive change. Their project, UCarryIt, is named after a type of algae (eukaryote). Students were given bio reactors to set up their own algae experiments. Their experiments and hypotheses led to lively and interesting discussions with Maddy and her team at UTS.
Year 10 celebrated their learning about evolution through natural selection by making camouflage butterflies, colouring them to match different areas around the School and hiding them to see how long they would last before being ‘eaten’. Students in Years 7 to 9 represented the birds that would normally eat the butterflies. It was their task to hunt them down and find as many as possible.
With blue acceleration - ocean acidification, marine heating, coral reef destruction, and plastic pollution - having major social and ecological consequences, National Science Week was a fantastic opportunity to raise student awareness and understanding of the importance of safeguarding the Earth’s oceans. And of course, they acquired a lot of interesting knowledge along the way and had lots of fun together too.
Great work Science Department, students and the parents who also got involved. Overall challenge winners will be announced next week. Watch this space!