In-Cress-ive CREST Club Projects

Our Junior CREST Club has returned with a vengeance so far this year - with a very distinctive biological flavour too.  

As well as students assessing methods of cress growth, this year we have a team of pupils, making its own bath bombs, that is currently wrangling with the problem of how to remove the beautifully coloured and smelling 'bomb' from the mould. Some of our 5th years are trying to extract natural red dyes to make their own vegan lipstick, while another team is looking into how the sound of stirring your hot drink is affected when different drinks are used.

Other eager scientists have been dissecting eyes to see the common features in different groups of vertebrates and another student has been extracting and looking at stem cells after finding they may be the secret to eternal youth!

Miss Sam Holyman (Junior Science co-ordinator) said: “It is wonderful to work with pupils beyond the constraints of the Science curriculum. I love to see their excitement as they follow their own interests and the whole club is mutually beneficial as we all increase our own skills, learning new techniques and expanding our scientific knowledge.”

CREST Club is open to anyone in our Fifth year or below and runs in Sc17 on Wednesday lunchtimes from 1.20pm.

(Photograph by Miss Holyman.)

Footnote
CREST is a qualification administered by the British Association of Science. The awards are designed for students to research a maths, engineering or science based question that is of interest to them. Pupils may work on their own or in small groups, researching and completing their own experiments. They then communicate what they have found to an outside assessor from Create a Future at the end of the Spring term.