This morning, I was back at Kenton for some more K’nex rollercoaster building. There’s a lot that goes into building a rollercoaster, and we only just scratched the surface. For more details, head over to our workshop notes page where you’ll find videos, games, and more information than you can shake a (K’nex) stick at. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have six rollercoasters to dismantle and put back into the correct boxes. Sigh.
How many people does it take to build a rollercoaster? It’s no joke; today we looked at the range of specialists needed to design and construct a rollercoaster, all so that you can get your fix of adrenalin at the local theme park.
I’ve written up some more information on our roller coasters activity page, with a few videos that are worth watching and links to some design-your-own games.
Joe has been in today 
investigating volcanoes with Year 4.
You’ll have dribbled honey down slopes and – let’s admit it – left some of that honey on our samples of volcanic rocks with your sticky fingers. So tomorrow, Joe will be washing rocks in the Think Lab sink. Not to worry.
For a reminder of what you studied, and some activities to continue your exploring at home, see our Volcano Workshop page.
This morning we were joined in our Think Lab by some of Heworth Grange’s year 9. We explored the scope of Physics with our Atoms to Astrophysics workshop. We discussed what atoms are made of, discovered how scientists can study things which are either very small or very big, and found out how we can analyse the light from distant stars to figure out what they are made of.
You can follow the entire journey from quarks to quasars in this animation of the scale of the universe.
Here are some of the sketches that were made from looking at our samples of plants, insects and minerals.
…and here you all are drawing those sketches:
This morning James visited Year 11 at Heworth Grange to run a Medical Physics workshop. There’s lots more to explore on the subject on our medical physics activity page.
As part of the workshop, James discussed lots of different possible careers in medicine – not just doctors and nurses. There are some good examples of people working in the field at the activity page, or you might like the Step into the NHS website, which has lots of information about roles in the NHS. There’s even a quick quiz which will suggest possible careers for you. Here are my results:
Is this what I should really be doing?
Today, Carol and James visited Heworth Grange to run two workshops.
We did Space Maths – for more on that, check out our page of extra activities. Trust us, you really want to follow the link to the ‘Tediously accurate scale model of the solar system.” No, really.
We also did light and photography: we’ve another page of extra material around light painting, including some jaw-dropping videos. Here are the light painting photos you took in the workshop:
Great to meet you all today. We enjoyed working with you, and hope we’ll be back soon!
Big thanks to Year 9 for their enthusiasm this morning, sculpting with light. Here’s what it looked like – we’ll try to pull a short video together of the finished wall too.
Today we took to the great outdoors to test some bubbles. We experimented with different shapes of bubble wand to see if they had any effect on the shape of the bubbles (…they didn’t). We moved on to making giant bubbles and big clusters of bubbles, appreciating their rainbows, reflections and shadows.
For more information and activities to try at home, see our page on Bubbles.
What a busy morning Miss Common’s Year 1 class have had. We’ve been exploring floating and sinking with a little help from the youngest Billy Goats Gruff.
We’ve designed, tested, taken measurements and redesigned to ensure that the goat made it safely across the river.
You can find out all about our workshop by clicking Goat on a Boat.
This morning Think Physics hosted year 7 students from Kenton School and year 6 students from a number of primary schools.
During the morning, we thought about what j0bs can be done if you study science by looking at photos of different people. There were some very surprising people, including a snowboarding mechanical engineer. You can see the pictures here.
We also tried to work out what were in some ‘mystery boxes’. There was a lot of shaking and listening going on. This activity reminds us that science doesn’t know all the answers. We talked about how science is all about:
Next came sound. The year 7 pupils explained to their year 6 partners how sound travels through the air, and they modeled what a sound wave looks like.
We heard how sound travels differently through the air and through solids using a coathanger and a slinky spring. Do ask for a demonstration!
Finally we made loud lollies and sorry if that’s already drive you up the wall. We used them to discuss how you would plan an investigation, and how to control all the factors that might affect our results.
