British Science Week - Smashing Stereotypes

7 March 2024

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British Science Week is a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths which takes place 8-17 March. This year, British Science Week marks its 30th anniversary and to celebrate this the theme is 'TIME'

This week, every pupil in Year 7 and Year 8 has taken part in special Science lessons to explore the theme and to meet one of the aims of the week which is to 'smash stereotypes'.

Assistant Head of Science, Mrs Potter, told us, "In their first lesson, students looked at 'what a scientist actually looks like, and we had a great range of ideas but managed to conclude that a scientist could look like anyone! We also looked at careers that they might not have thought you needed science to do and saw that Science underpins most, if not all careers in some way."

The STEM (Science Technology, Engineering & Maths) practical exercise for British Science Week this year was to design and build a mechanism to accurately measure 10 seconds. There were some excellent solutions to this using either sand and a cup or some very imaginative marble run designs.

The closest time across both year groups was measured at 9.91 seconds in Mrs Roberts' Year 8 class but all of the classes have done themselves proud as you can see from the efforts in Mrs Massey's room (see photos). The winners (Year 8 Sophie P, Phoebe P and Maya R - pictured) said that they really enjoyed the practical work, especially the testing part where they kept tweaking their designs to improve it.