As we returned to school full-time from Week 5, it was a very busy week as students quickly embraced the learning culture back in their science classrooms. A quick round-up and highlights from the first week back.

Year 7 students are working through classification of living organisms and their adaptations. 

Students collected vegetation samples from around the school to develop a classification key to help them to understand how scientists organise living organisms. Students have also met some of the reptiles to examine their adaptations, Monty was a big hit as usual. Students also dissected fish to examine their vertebrae and gill structure.

Year 10 students have been studying a space topic while working remotely in Term 2, so much of this first week back was consolidating their understanding and completing a common assessment practical investigation, in which students were challenged to build a pinhole camera to measure the diameter of the Sun. Mrs Lewis’s extension class also explored the science of ‘film canister’ rockets. Click here to view a clip of this experiment.

 

 

 

Year 11 Biology students began using the senior microscopes this week as they further develop their microscopy skills to quantitatively explore the microscopic world of Cell Biology. Students were able to measure microscopic structures to the thousandth of a millimetre (μm). Students were able to measure the length of locust muscle fibres 360μm and human red blood cells 6.5μm.

 

Year 12 students enjoying their third week back at school, have been really busy completing essential practical experiences in preparation for HSC assessment practical tasks in Biology, Chemistry and Physics.

In Physics students are tasked to determine the wavelength of light emitted by a laser pointer, to achieve this they used a double slit diffraction grating to measure the interference caused by overlapping light waves and the patterns caused by this can be used to determine the wavelength of light. Clever people, those Physicists!

In Biology students investigated the genetics of an inheritable disease, sickle cell anaemia and a mutation in tumour suppressor gene P53 resulting in Breast cancer. Students prepared a gel electrophoresis chamber and separated the DNA fragments to determine causality. One of their gels is pictured below with a simplified key.