Science and Engineering club

Science and engineering club began again a couple of weeks ago and the members have already been thinking more about science investigations and simple engineering projects.  So far we have been thinking about the skills scientists use with an activity where the children had to make observations about wrapped up presents to help them make a prediction about what was in them.  We then watched a video on a disappearing test tubes before using a range of objects, glass beakers, water and test tubes to try and make a test tube 'disappear'.  We made lots of observations about how light travels differently through water, glycerin and some other materials.

This week we began thinking about the nature of engineering by solving an engineering problem. We watched a video to find out about the engineers who worked on the problem of safely landing one of the Mars landers.  The children then worked in teams to design and make a lander for astronauts to land on Mars. They were given a limited number of materials to use and had to think how to gently land the 2 marshmallows in their lander without them bouncing out or being damaged.  One of the aspects of the design we concentrated on was creating a suspension system.