Science Week 2020 – Food Glorious Food

Science Week 2020 has been a scrumptious, delectable success! Our theme of food has seen lots of exciting chemistry, lots of tickling taste buds and lots of fantastic scientific enquiry from both children and adults.

On Monday, Dan from the Royal Institution was back with his Explosive Food show. We saw how electricity can be passed through a gherkin, the explosive energy contained in flour, the process that our food goes through in the digestive system and we learned about how crucial the sense of smell is to tasting when we did the Woosh Test! After school, Dan did his Community Show and we were delighted to see so many parents and family members attend. We learned about the incredible power of friction, how batteries were first invented, the power of electrical generators and the magic of surface tension.

In class, children across the school have been doing some tremendously exciting science. Year 6 have been doing lots of blind tasting, where children taste food and drink without knowing what they are and rate them on how tasty they are. With the results, the children were then able to do some fantastic data analysis. Year 4 have also been creating bar charts, having studied the amount of sugar in different orange juices. Year 3 have been busy getting creative. They have created cupcakes in mugs AND ice lollies – some amazing chemistry. Every year group has been busy doing science linked to food.

Our year group parent workshops have seen a vast amount of bread created. Years 2,3,4 and 6 have all had a go at baking their own bread in a bag. It was wonderful to see the teamwork and community spirit shining through as everyone helped each other to create some very tasty loaves. We all learned about the science behind why bread dough rises, as the yeast and sugar react to form carbon dioxide which blows the dough up like a balloon. We then thought about what happens when the bread is in the oven, how the heat turns any liquid in the dough to a gas, thus further inflating the mixture. Years 4 and 6 had time to consider how balanced their diet is and how they could plan a meal plan to make it even more of a healthy mix!

We are looking forward to the next week, which will see Year 5 have a go at making their own bread and Reception and Year 1 create their own cookie decorations. Thank you to everyone who has made this Science Week another great success.

Meredith and Alex