11th-15th of March saw us into British Science Week with many activities being run by the science department, including a key stage 3 trip to the Science Live Show in London. Many scientists featured in the show with the head line Q & A session with Professor Robert Winston a renowned biologist who specialised in the field of fertility and genetics.

Students arrived at the venue early so we made good use of the fabulous weather and enjoyed lunch in a local garden before heading back to the venue to get our seats. The show started promptly with Dr Hannah Critchlow introducing students to the wonderful workings of the complex brain and how we can see neural function using electrical currents. She gained interest of many students in the auditorium by her famous ‘Let’s electrocute the teacher’ act she likes to perform where an innocent teacher is hooked up to an electrode and 20mV of electricity is applied to the teacher’s funny bone to bring about the involuntary movement of the muscle causing the arm and hand to move on its own. For the fun part, a student is then hooked up to electrodes on their head to monitor brain waves when performing a task, which students found fascinating to watch on the big screen. Hannah then opened up the floor for questioning and one of our students Maya Kerai (7E) asked a question about the brain. A neuroscience PhD Student, Tomi Akingbade, followed thereafter who has been studying the relationship between Alzhimer’s disease and inflammation at the University of Cambridge and spoke to students about her research.She is also the founder of Black women in Science and is encouraging more women from the black community to step forward into the scientific field.

We then were honoured with the presence of Professor Robert Winston who joined us for a Q & A session. We had sent in questions from students prior to the show and they picked a question by Maya Kerai (7E) asking how caterpillars turned into butterflies in their cocoons.

Also during the Q & A session another one of our students, Tommy Kon (7E) asked a question about why Professor Winston chose to take up biology.The session proved very informative.

After a short interlude, students had a talk from another student from Cambridge university Douglas Acheampong who is a biomedical scientist researching how we interact with technology students found this a bit of a WOW factor as he used a small drone to demonstrate. Finally,Dr Anna Ploszajski introduced students to the idea of the properties of materials and their uses in daily lives while as she gave an account of her journey swimming through the English channel and wanting to get the energy she required through food, but a type of food that would not get soggy and soak up salt water or sink and deduced that the best invention for any swimmer crossing the English Channel would be the milk chocolate mini rolls as the chocolate layer prevents ant water getting into the roll, the sponge cake is light enough to float on water and the cream filling gives the right amount of burst of energy required!

Students had a great time and it has given some of the more enthusiastic students something to think about when choosing careers in science.