Pioneer was lucky enough to host a full day and evening of exciting shows from the Royal Institute of Science!
During the day, students experienced an interactive session focused on ‘super cells’. This ranged from talking about the structure of cells, to what happens when things go wrong. In the Year 9 Showing, Emmanuel S got to represent an Antibiotic and ‘destroyed’ all the bacteria by popping balloons! This showed us that it is hard for the body to distinguish between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ bacteria. Students then got to see how our understanding of these cells has helped with medicine, using the burning of iron wool to represent disease spread and Nicolas P in Year 7 got to ‘infect’ Mr Gordon and spray him with disease! We then looked at how our bodies own defence system; our white blood cells, are specific to different diseases and that we are made up of ‘Super Cells’.
The evening community show involved many interactive practical’s, looking into how rockets get to space. The practical’s ranged from a friction tug of war to figuring out ways to create enough force to escape earth’s gravity! There were lots of explosions, rockets, and fire (causing a very stressed Miss Spencer). Both pupils, and their families got involved trying to overcome all the obstacles involved with sending a rocket to space. Eventually, after seeing the effects of the density of carbon dioxide, the massive impact friction can have and how we can use everyday ingredients to create explosions we managed to send our bottle rockets to space….. Or they would have if they didn’t hit the roof!
