Friday Afternoon Community Chemistry

Local primary school children are invited to Warwick School every Friday to see a series of experiments performed by a Teacher of Chemistry at Warwick School. Warwick School Foundation students volunteer alongside the Chemistry practitioner to develop their leadership skills.

The children were treated to a variety of short, spectacular experiments where they observed changes of state and energy with plenty of flashes and bangs!

It wasn’t a boring Chemistry lesson; rocket fuels and ‘Dragon’s Breath’ flames were demonstrated, whose colours help us to understand and identify the chemicals from which our universe is made. Pressure waves were experienced from one of the simplest reactions in nature and the mysteries of producing light without heat were revealed. Liquid iron cascaded from an incredibly hot reaction and tables where blanketed with mountains of ‘Elephant’s Toothpaste’ foam, showing the power of catalysts. The ‘Bengal Flare’ was breath-taking and incredible, showing how amazingly bright firework colours can be.

The ‘Harry Potter’ style ‘Potion’ was a huge success showing a solid changing directly into a gas – known as sublimation, using dry ice and hot water.

The fun came when Mr Etheridge demonstrated the dangerous effects of extremely low temperatures on living tissue by plunging a bunch of flowers into cold liquid nitrogen. This was followed by an apple and a banana. When removed from the liquid these natural products were smashed with a hammer into smithereen as they had become frozen and rock solid!

The children all thoroughly enjoyed themselves, and hopefully left feeling that they had learnt something exciting and new, which will give them an insight into how interesting science is and wanting to know more.