Schoolchildren from across London have been given the exciting opportunity to become scientists for the day at Middlesex University.
More than 160 primary school pupils from years 3 to 5 got to enjoy scientific experiments on the Hendon campus in North London as part of a series of chemistry outreach events.
The groups included 60 children from the Ark Globe Academy in Elephant and Castle, another 60 from Hampden Gurney Church of England School in Paddington and 45 from St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School in Westminster.
This new science outreach programme, which is called ‘practical potions’, has been part funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
It is based on the primary curriculum and had a particular focus on practical and observational skills and with the goal to encourage more children to take up the subject in future.
In these sessions, children used molymod kits in which they each built a model of lactic acid and then connected them in a chain to form polylactic acid, which is a biodegradable plastic.
Budding young chemists observed and enjoyed a ‘magic beakers’ session in which liquids are poured one into the other to reveal a succession of impressive colour changes. Many of the pupils were visibly stunned as the colours changed.
The children then completed their own practical potion experiment which used liquids featuring names such as ‘vampire blood’, ‘dragon whiskers’, ‘spider eggs’ and ‘monster serum’.
During these experiments, pupils were observing the reactions by looking for colour changes and the formation of bubbles.
Programme lead, Dr Britta Stordal, associate professor in cancer research, said: “We hope that by bringing young children into the lab in a controlled and safe environment that they might be inspired to become scientists themselves one day. Above all we wanted to ensure that these events are fun for the pupils. I explained to the children that when you go to university you get to pick your favourite subject and study it all the time and they were genuinely impressed.”
Caoimhe Browne, year 3 science lead at the Ark Academy, said: “The main aim of these outreach events is to develop their observational and practical skills. The children have really enjoyed the sessions and some have even said they would like to study science in future.’
One Ark Academy pupil Adam Zerouali, aged seven, is one of the children who has an already expressed an interest in becoming a scientist. “We’ve been doing all kinds of interesting stuff and I really enjoyed the experiments,” said Adam.
