Year 5 GDST Science Conference at the Royal Institution

On Thursday 2 May, we went to the Royal Institution in London for the GDST Science Conference with Mrs Marwaha and Mrs Vitale. The whole day was focused was on ‘The Science of Colour’. After having some delicious snacks on arrival, we did some exciting experiments in the L’Oréal Lab. We started by exploring with primary coloured lights and investigated how to create secondary colours and how the neurons in our eyes see different colours.

As well as learning about UV lights, we went on to a more ‘dangerous’ Science investigation!  We firstly made sure that we were safe by putting on safety goggles. We were told that we were going to use Bunsen burners to investigate how to change the colour of the flame and were given splints (thin wooden sticks) with a chemical on the tip. These were carefully pointed into the flame and we noticed a change in the colour, this happened because a specific chemical was put onto each splint. For it to turn red, there was Lithium Chloride on the splint and when it turned green, there was Boric acid, for yellow there was Sodium Chloride, for light purple, potassium chloride and for orange they put it in Calcium Chloride.

After a lovely lunch in the Ri, we worked with girls form other GDST schools to read clues to search for Scientific facts from around the museum. We then did some colour activities to understand how to separate primary colours from secondary colours by using water, felt-tip pens and filter paper. We also learned how friction pens work!

To end the day, we went into the fabulous and very famous Faraday Theatre to watch a Science Spectacular Event.  Scientists from the Ri performed lots of amazing experiments which all ended with a loud BANG!

We all had a great day and we feel very lucky to have experienced first-hand Science at the Royal Institution.

By Megan, Francesca, Amirah, Jemima and Aadya (Year 5)