The STEM subjects of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics are key to a pupil’s learning, at the core of every school. Vitally important, it is essential that pupils are intrigued and excited by these subjects. One of the ways in which Shiplake ensures this is exciting to pupils is by taking external trips. On Friday 4 November, a group of Year 9 pupils headed to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Thank you to Mrs Louise Adamson, who provides the following report on a successful and unique field trip:
‘A small group of students nominated from Maths, Science and Computing travelled to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, to experience a trip that was aimed at engaging students with real life examples of these subject areas in use. The tour around some of the lab areas highlighted the way that they use multi-disciplinary teams to work on projects, whether these be really small scale – biological cell research, or amazingly large – astronomical projects about the evolution of stars. In all instances, data might be gathered by the main discipline, often using equipment designed and built by their own technical and engineering team, then analysed by the mathematics and computing departments, before being interpreted by the main discipline area again!
The students, as well as the tour, had the opportunity to see some of the equipment un action, and to do some practical chemistry work in the laboratory, growing crystals using enzymes and bacteria. There was a group challenge to create a jacket to prevent heat loss from a beaker of water, work out the heat loss factor and present their jacket decisions and results to the other groups. The day finished with an excellent interactive talk on the Herschel telescope by Dr Chris Pearson, explaining how he used data collected with infrared cameras from the telescopes to look at the age of stars and galaxies. It was a fantastic trip and the pupils were able to see the extensive use of STEM subjects at work in the real world, opening up endless possibilities of what to pursue in the future.’
Pupil Sam Nike commented: ‘my favourite activity was creating an efficient thermal insulator to try and contain the heat of hot water, as it really made me question what would best stop the heat from escaping. It also gave me interesting facts about space, rockets and why and what is used to keep rockets warm. Tom Craven added: ‘it was a very interesting and engaging day, visiting the UK’s foremost research facilities in the fields of particle physics, space science, materials, astronomy, photon science, computational and e-science, biology, biomedicine and chemistry.’
