STEM Visitors

A Day On The Track – Engineering

Year 4 discovered a lot more about engineering when Mr Robinson took time off the track to talk about his exciting work with Formula One recently.  The children were so interested to hear about his action packed career which takes him all over the world.

Every child was invited to ask questions and offered the opportunity to look at his very special photos including the famous drivers he works with.  They also enjoyed inspecting the technical equipment that has been carefully designed to keep the drivers as safe as possible when driving at very high speed.

One of the highlights of Mr Robinson’s talk was hearing all about his team’s WORLD record breaking pit stop time of 2.05 SECONDS which earned them a prestigious place in the Guinness book of Records. A complete tyre change in the blink of an eye seems unimaginable – the class agreed this is definitely teamwork at it’s best!

It’s great to hear from Mr Robinson and recent news from the government that there is an increasing number of Science apprenticeships on offer for young people nowadays.  More details about this work place based route into a STEM career can be found on the government’s website listed below.

The children are always very enthusiastic to hear from parents/carers with scientific careers to find out more about the appliance of Science.

Please email stem@bramblesideacademytrust.co.uk if you would like to showcase your career and inspire others.

For more information about government apprenticeships see https://www.getingofar.gov.uk/

Food For Thought – Food Technology

Year 5 got a great opportunity to learn more about the research and development of cereal products today when a food technologist came along to share his experience and work as a project manager at Weetabix Ltd.

Developing New Products- the Year 5’s discuss their imaginative ideas!

Thinking about growing grains.Our wheat is still going strong after 40 days.

Inspired by the school’s recent plot of wheat and impressed by their thoughtful and imaginative ideas, the children were asked if they would be keen to try and grow some ancient grains for him next Spring.  Some of these varieties of grain are so old legend has it that they were found buried in the pyramids of some pharaohs!  How exciting to bring these seeds to life and see how they compare to our modern day varieties of wheat!  We look forward to the challenge…

November 2017 Sorghum Update

Almost meeting the challenge…

It’s been an amazing surprise to discover that the Sorghum seeds that germinated at Brambleside school have successfully grown into healthy mature Sorghum plants with large healthy seed heads!  Although it failed to grow to full maturity in our school garden soil we now know that it can be done and we will try hard to investigate why it grew so well in a school with a much sandier soil.

This crop is usually a source of grain in hot and dry parts of the world where other cereal crops cannot survive.   It’s come as a real surprise to see them do so well in a sheltered sandy soil in another Northamptonshire primary school.

We feel real inspired to investigate this further next year by growing the harvested seeds from these plants in much sandier soil.

Any further ideas you would like the children to explore to encourage sorghum to grow in our school soil please reply below.  We look forward to finding out more…

 

Year 2 Are Fascinated By Toxicology – Chemistry

Thank you so much to toxicologist, Dr Garry Dix who recently visited Year 2 to share his enthusiasm for his scientific career.  Dr Garry’s fascinating talk included an overview of his work as a toxicologist working in the fragrance industry and his ground breaking research with blind people and their sense of smell.  Year 2 were particularly fascinated to learn more about how the body’s defence system reacts to allergens when they come into contact with the skin.  Dr Garry was very keen to answer the children’s questions which they previously emailed to him and offered a practical follow up session involving activities to encourage the children to work like real scientists.

We are very much looking forward to a possible follow up visit so we can work practically to develop our growing scientific enquiry skills and discover more about this fascinating topic.