Chemlabs Visit 2008
"Achieving our best together"
On the 24th April 2008 postgraduate research chemists visited our school for a demonstration assembly and to hold workshops for the year5 and year6 pupils.
During the assembly experiments were carried out showing the reactions of different gases, liquid nitrogen, and chemical reactions of combined substances, which produced foam.
The workshops were held in year 5’s classroom, which was converted into a laboratory for the day. The school of chemistry rules applied to the class for the day and pupils had to wear lab coats, rubber gloves and safety goggles and ensure hair was tied back.
There were three workshops, the first of which (called polymers) was a slime- making session, and the making of thermoplastic (which the pupils were able to take home.
The next workshop was an iodine clock experiment, which showed a colour change when solutions A and B were added with some water. They were challenged to find out the correct volume of water which would change the colour in 30 seconds.
The third workshop involved magnesium and hydrochloric acid. Pupils were given pieces of magnesium and solutions of different concentrations of acid. They then had to investigate the times taken for the reactions to stop, which enabled them to work out an unknown concentration of one of the bottles of acids. The pupils were also shown how to collect and test for hydrogen gas.
Any further information about ‘Chemlabs’ can be found on their website at
Here are some video clips of experiments carried out:
Video 2 Video 3