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Year 5 Chemistry Workshop
Mrs McGivern sent this report:
On Saturday, 9 November, forty Year 5 students from local schools were treated to one final fireworks show this season, during a very timely Chemistry Workshop!
To start the session Dr Parsons and Mrs McGivern set off a variety of indoor fireworks, set fire to methane bubbles and created some very noisy cannon fire using ethanol, hydrogen peroxide and potassium permanganate.
As is traditional with a fireworks show, there were lots of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the students, and a couple of gasps when the Screaming Jelly Baby experiment was lit, releasing a lot of smoke, making a lot of noise and producing a purple flame!
Students then lit Bunsen burners, and carried out a variety of flame tests to investigate the colours produced by heating various chemicals. A firm favourite was Copper – a bright green colour that was very unexpected.
In the second half of the session students investigated the best fuels to use, with an experiment involving heating water with spirit burners and some high level calculations. This work is similar to required work carried out by our GCSE students, so we were very impressed with the girls who visited.