British Science Week

British Science week is a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths, which took place this year between 8th and 17th March. Each year there is a theme and this year it was time. Time is key to so many discoveries and the passage of time is something that has been measured for at least the last 5,000 years in some form or another.

The Bay CE Secondary Science department once again decided to hold an Interschools challenge for pupils in Year 5,6 and 7, with teams from The Bay, Gatten and Lake, Bembridge and Niton taking part, using TIME as the theme of the task that the students had to undertake. Teams of 6 students from each school arrived at the main hall, where they were met by Year 8 Science ambassadors to register them, with no idea what the task was going to be. The only thing they could see was that it involved lots and lots of cardboard tubing.

An initial briefing was given, to go over the rules of the competition, and the task was finally revealed. Students had one hour to build a marble run, the winning team being the one that could keep the marble rolling for the longest time over three trials using their mean score. Teams were only allowed to use the material they were provided, and with the support of the Year 8 Ambassadors, they began planning and constructing their models.

The atmosphere was fantastic and there was such a buzz in the hall, students trying things out, changing ideas, discussing ideas and lots of trial and error - it was an amazing afternoon. Once the hour was up, the runs were tested 3 times and the mean calculated to work out the winning teams.

The final results were:

1st Place - The Bembridge Bees with a winning average of 7.82s

2nd Place - Gravity Guns (Bay Primary) with an average of 5.71s

3rd Place - Greenwich mean team (Niton) with an average of 5.62s

All participants received a certificate and prizes were awarded to the top 3 teams; a STEM clock building kit for 1st place, marble runs for 2nd place and Science badges for 3rd place.

Thank you to all that took part and the Bay Science department looks forward to running another event next year - I wonder what the challenge will be then…..