Last chance to claim your early-bird discount for our Half-Term Camp!
Sign up here using the code OHT10 to get an additional 10% off the week.
We have both morning and afternoon sessions available, all packed with experiments that will fire up your future scientist’s curiosity and make for an awesome half-term!
SCIENCE BEHIND THE WAND
Ascendio is the perfect spell to get you out of any undesired situation. Ascendio, and you launch out of the water before your gills seal up. Ascendio, and you leap up and reach the top shelf. Ascendio, and you leave that awkward conversation down in your dust. Simple elasticity, like the type used to power our pogo sticks and cup launchers, could get us some of the way there, but for some much-needed oomph, we need to turn to proper propulsion. By pressurising gas and using it to force water into jets, we will launch rockets up to the ceiling and beyond! Then, using nothing but the force of hot gases, we will propel matchstick rockets and water bottles ahead of their fiery trails!
MYTH BUSTERS
Can you walk across a pool of oobleck? Before we break out the cornflour and water and make this thick ooze, let’s finally settle what separates liquids from solids. While Newton thought this was straightforward enough to warrant a law, the discovery of non-Newtonian fluids proved he was a bit hasty. Some, like mayonnaise and toothpaste, act solid until a force is applied. While others, like ketchup and paint, become more runny when you do the same to them. But oobleck is where things get really weird. Gently mix it, and you have a liquid on your hands (as we quite literally will!). But strike it and watch as it turns resolutely solid under your might. After releasing all of our stress on the stuff, we will fill up a pool and run, hop, and skip our way across the surface of a liquid like no other!
PERIODIC PIONEERS
Some elements are so vital that they need an entire session. But carbon is going to need two! We start by exploring carbon in its many forms. It can be as brittle and lacklustre as pencil lead and as hard and dazzling as diamonds. But we are most familiar with it as carbon dioxide. Previously, we used it to make fountains of fizz, but this week, we will go subzero! Usually, when a gas is cooled enough, it will condense into a liquid. However, when CO2 is cooled to just about -80°C (colder even than Antarctica!), it skips being a liquid and freezes solid. And as it melts, the released gas rapidly cools the surrounding water vapour and condenses into fine droplets of liquid water. Our chemists will do just this as they turn the lab into a real-life potions class filled with eerie fog and bubbly mess.
