Science Week experiments
August 19, 2022
Written By Ryan Jinks
Glass, its everywhere. Look around and you will see glass, be it your phone screen or the vessel you drink out of. Glass — a gateway to another world — is an impressive substance, formed in nature by a lightning strike in sand or volcanos. Glass is a brittle, hard substance that is formed from Silica (SiO2), a tetrahedral compound which is heated to form glass. A non-crystalline substance, glass is a wonder substance that this year’s Science Week is dedicated to exploring and appreciating, having been used by the ancient Egyptians and still used to this day.
Glass rods have a variety of applications and this year students are exploring how they can manipulate glass using heat to make glass rods that they then can decorate and reseal. We have learned about the applications of glass and it’s importance to the world.
Written by Sophie Gilligan
This week, students from Year 7 through Year 11 have been invited to participate in an escape room in which students work in teams to complete puzzles that have been designed with the theme of ‘glass’ in mind. Challenges included: using kaleidoscopes and many other interesting aspects surrounding the formation and uses of glass.
Winning students unlock all ten codes before the time is up to have successfully completed the 2022 Science escape room for ‘Glass: More Than Meets The Eye.’
Finishing students commented that it was ‘riveting’, ‘thrilling’ and ‘exceeded their expectations’, reporting to have continued the legacy that the 2019 escape room left.
Written by Isabel O’Brien
On Wednesday last week we were given the opportunity to travel to Mount Annan Botanic Gardens. There were multiple workshops throughout the day involving analysis of fossils and live animals run by Taronga Zoo and the Australian Museum, which enabled us to further understand our studies in biology.
We specifically looked at convergent and divergent evolution as well as physiological, structural and behavioural adaptations that we could see first-hand through the nature around us. We saw fossil casts of platypus and live animals such as a possum, python, tortoise and shingleback lizard. Overall, it was an engaging and fun experience that put our studies into perspective in the real world.
