Welcome back! We hope you all had a lovely break and are recharged for the last half of the term.
And to mark this spooky month, we are hosting a special Halloween workshop on Friday, the 24th of October. With eerie experiments, terrifying tricks, and tasty treats, it will be an hour of hair-raising fun!
Workshop 1 | 15:00 | Ages 5 & 6
Workshop 2 | 16:30 | Ages 7+
AED 175 per child. (VAT exclusive)
Sign up here.
SCIENCE BEHIND THE WAND
Since even Aparecium wasn’t enough for Hermione to unlock the secrets of Tom Riddle’s diary, we will be turning to science to make and reveal a whole palette of invisible inks. Acids, such as lemon juice, have long been the go-to choice for a quick, DIY invisible ink; however, the heat needed to reveal them poses a significant fire hazard. So we turn to base instead. By writing our secret messages in a baking soda solution, we can use turmeric’s ability to detect pH by changing its colour to reveal them with just a spray. But for total secrecy, we need to turn to ultraviolet light. By shining this invisible light onto messages written in bleach and UV-reactive ink, even Professor Snape won’t be able to reveal our secrets. Mischief managed!
MYTH BUSTERS
Imagine you’re sailing the high seas with pirates in hot pursuit. With their faster ship, it’s only a matter of time before they catch up, so you need to find some extra speed. In your desperation, you and your crew take big gulps of air and start blowing into your sail. Would that work? Can you really blow your own sail? By building mini rafts, hoisting sails upon them, and using fans to blow at them, the myth will soon be put to rest. But by doing some further testing with fan cars on dry land, while getting to grips with Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion, we may find a better way to leave those pirates in our wake.
PERIODIC PIONEERS
It’s on to another vital element for life! Without nitrogen, proteins, the building blocks of life, would not be possible. Despite nitrogen gas making up most of our atmosphere, bioavailable forms of nitrogen were so scarce that nitrogen-rich biological matter, like the “stuff” we all leave behind in toilets, was at times more valuable than gold. Just as chemistry eventually found a way to split the strongly-bonded N2 gas molecule and feed the world, we will work on super-cooling that gas to -196 degrees C (as cold as Uranus and Neptune!) so that it stops being a gas altogether. With this liquid nitrogen in (well-protected) hands, we will freeze roses and marshmallows and smash them to smithereens, cook up dragon-breath popcorn & unleash a massive explosion of fog!
