What an incredible day we had at Stonebow on Monday 6^th March to launch British Science Week 2023!

Mrs Bailey started the day off with an assembly, where our school discussed what and who we think Scientists are, what they might look like and what kind of jobs they do. Interestingly, some of the responses included:

“Scientists wear white coats.”

“We’ve never met any Scientists before.”

“All Scientists have crazy grey or white hair!”

The children were extremely excited to find out that, in fact, they would meet and talk to some of our very own Scientists in our community during the day!

After Mrs Bailey’s introductory assembly, we were greeted by our first visitor, Matt, whose career at JCB has great STEM links. Our children were so enthused by Matt and what his job role involves; they were full of interesting questions about the places he’s been and the machines and vehicles he’s worked with.

Matt left the children with a fantastic message – the Science lessons we focus on in school, the curiosity and cooperation that teachers encourage and the questions that are asked are all useful skills that support in later life when choosing a career like his.

Matt definitely inspired our children and we are immensely grateful to Matt for sharing the morning with us. We may well have some JCB apprentices joining him in a few years’ time!

Dipa was our next Scientist visitor! She specialises in food science and has worked with lots of different well-known companies. We were learning about the process from product design through to being on the shop floor; we won’t be able to look at food in the supermarkets in the same way!

We were also amazed at the amounts of sugar in some every day drinks – a real eye opener!

Jenya, who is an expert with all things wind turbines, was our third visitor of the day.

She told us all many interesting facts about power generation and the logistics of how wind turbines work. Did you know that one blade of a wind turbine is often heavier than four elephants? Wind turbines can also be as tall as 72 adults standing on top of each other!

Our fourth and final visitor of the day was David.

David went into more detail about the materials that diggers are made from and why. He encouraged some children to come up and try to smash some rubber band balls and plastic balls – to which they couldn’t. He then invited children to drop a chocolate egg, which in turn, smashed into little pieces! The children then discussed why diggers are not made from chocolate – disappointment to some chocoholics in school! Thank you David for your engaging sessions with our children.