Our students have a few busy weeks ahead of them as they complete assessment tasks and prepare for exams. This week we will show students have engaged in practical work.

Year 7 Science

Year 7 students have been completing a Chemistry unit on Mixtures. Here we see students conducting a prac on ‘Heating and dissolving.’

Students were given a mixture of sand, sawdust, salt, iron filings, nails, pebbles and marbles. Using the properties of each pure substance and various separating mixtures techniques, studied in class, students were given the challenge to separate the various components of the mixture as part of a student design assessment task. Let’s have a look at some students of students with the equipment.

Year 8 Esteem

Students in ESTEEM have been given the challenge of creating an experimental procedure to work out the ratio of two chemicals needed to elicit a colour change at exactly 60 seconds.  There were a number of successes, although students found repeating their results (a must for good scientific experimentation) was more difficult than expected! 

Year 11 Biology

In this experiment orbies (expandable water toys) are place into a 0%, 10%, and 20% saltwater solution for 30 minutes to find the percentage change in weight, in order to replicate similarities on how a red blood cell would act in a hypertonic solution (solute in the external environment being higher than in the internal environment). Due to osmosis, it is hypothesised that water will move out of the orbies to reach equilibrium causing them to shrink in size, as salt particles are too large to enter through the membrane.

Year 10 Science

Year 10 students have been studying chemical reactions as part of their Chemistry unit.