After-school science club enthuses Kent students

Thanks to financial support from the Royal Society of Chemistry Kent Local Section, the Fort Pitt Grammar School in Chatham, UK, was able to offer its students its very own science and engineering after-school club. Every Thursday afternoon for the last school year, 30 students from Year 7, 8 and 9, assisted by students from Years 10 to 12, explored the fun and unpredictability of science.

Ranging from building robots to flying gliders, the activities challenged the students both physically and mentally and provided an insight into the diversity of science. Celebrating 45 years since the first lunar landing, a range of activities concentrated on space science, including building and launching high pressure rockets and hot air balloons, creating space robots, solar buggies and water rockets.

Chemistry-focused activities included forensic investigation techniques, ballistics, making dyes, oil paints and pigments, self-destructing machines, disappearing worms, formulating fragrances, sedimentary sausages, making moo glue, glass beads and bracelets, lip balm, hair gels and scented tea lights. Yet other activities allowed the students to put their engineering skills to the test, with K’nex structures, clay models, making and testing concrete and paper engineering.

Looking back at the school year of after-school science fun, Laura Kirwan, Year 12 student at the school and a STEM Ambassador, said: “The club has been exceptional fun, but it also ensured that here at Fort Pitt, science is talked up. It has certainly raised the profile of science and placed it firmly centre stage in the minds of our students.”