Sheffield Girls' and local schools come together and celebrate science

As part of this year’s UK Science Week, Sheffield Girls’ hosted a special event on Friday 15th March for pupils from Key Stage 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 to showcase their science experiments and activities, around this year’s theme of ‘Time’. 

Pupils from a number of local primary and secondary schools joined in to collaborate with their own experiments and demonstrations and enjoyed sharing their experiences and testing each other’s theories. There were experiments with walking water, creating batteries, making rainbows, evaporation studies, Virtual Reality experiences and even a volcano, so everyone had something to do. We looked closely at Darwin’s finches to consider who has the ‘best beak’ whilst floating flowers tested capillary action. Diffusion was explored with Skittles - though perhaps the bigger test was that of self-control not to eat them!

Guests from the University of Sheffield and local science and technology organisations joined the event to share their experiences and pupils enjoyed a short keynote speech delivered by Saman Qarni, an Engineer at Sheffield University, specialising in manufacturing and electronic engineering who is also a programme officer for the  Maker School Project, a programme which provides children and young people with the skills, knowledge and habits of mind to make projects in relation to real world problems using both high- and low-tech tools, materials and technologies.  

Jo Hill, Head of Science at Sheffield Girls’ said: “Science Week is always such a fantastic opportunity to explore the wider applications of science in all walks of life and to introduce new concepts to pupils and start new conversations. We are passionate about STEM in school, and we celebrate it every single week, but our pupils are particularly excited to have the opportunity at this event to explore new ideas and share their interests with other children from around Sheffield.” 

Thank you to everyone involved!