By: Sally Thomson – Teacher of Science, Framlingham College Prep School
On Monday 5th November 2018 five of our Year 5 girls set off with Miss Thomson to OBH for their annual STEM Olympiad. The aim of the day was to excite and enthuse girls about the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) through a carousel of challenges and activities.
Our first challenge was a scientific one. The girls had to find out which fruit juice contains the most Vitamin C so that the pirate captain could stop his crew getting scurvy! This involved precise measuring and the use of an indicator. The second challenge involved making some toothpaste for Terence the T-Rex who was a lazy dinosaur and didn’t like cleaning his teeth! The girls produced a pink striped foam that cascaded out of their conical flask much to their amazement. After a snack there was a Scratch coding workshop and Miss Thomson was amazed at how quickly the girls were able to create a game that involved Tom chasing Jerry through a house until he lost all his lives – a great deal of fun was had by all. After lunch the engineering task proved quite a challenge but after a few false starts the wind powered buggy, aptly named ‘The Fram Flyer’, was made and it managed to travel a short distance down the course powered by a hairdryer. Much better teamwork and sharing of ideas was evident in the Mathematics puzzles and many were solved very quickly but some were just too baffling at the end of an exciting day.
Well done to Esmae, Evie, Alice, Xanthe and Verity who represented Fram Prep exceptionally well and a big thank you to OBH for hosting such a fun STEM day.
