The highly anticipated British Science Week has come to an end; it has been a huge success, with a week full of activities for both our students and students from local schools.
The Mark Rutherford School and Harpur Trust Planetarium was the focal point at this year’s BedPop Science Festival event in Bedford town centre on Saturday, March 7. Over the course of the day, over 250 people were lucky enough to watch a show in the Planetarium. The general consensus seemed to be that the Planetarium was “awesome”!
For the first time ever on Monday, March 9, the amazing opportunity of a lecture by a BBC Trust Me, I’m a Doctor and BBC Horizon presenter was offered to students, staff and the local community. Dr Giles Yeo is a geneticist with over 20 years’ experience studying obesity and the brain control of food intake. His current research focuses on understanding how pathways in the brain that control food intake differ between lean and obese people, and the influence of our genes in our eating habits. An interesting yet highly entertaining lecture was followed by a meet-and-greet session for our Sixth Form STEM Scholars – this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many involved, and gave students the chance to not only ask him questions but share all the amazing things they are doing within school alongside their studies! We are very grateful that Dr Yeo gave up his time to come and talk to our students and hope he will come back again in the future!
Once again, our annual Primary Science Event, which took place on Wednesday, March 11, was a huge success. Sixth Form STEM Scholars James Rowntree and Sydney Daisley organised and ran the event for 71 Year 5 students from Renhold Primary School, Sheerhatch Primary School and Brickhill Primary School.
This year the event had a theme of ‘forensic science’; the young students put their detective hats on and completed a variety of tasks on rotation to solve the mystery of ‘Who Killed Mr Bunsen?’. Activities included testing chemical samples, extracting and analysing DNA from a banana, analysis on fingerprints, shoeprints and cloth fibres, and cracking codes using ultraviolet pens and light. James and Sydney were supported by a group of our STEM Scholars, our recently trained Year 9 STEM Ambassadors and two students from the University of Bedfordshire.
We are very grateful to the British Science Association for providing us with a very generous grant which meant that this week was such a huge success. Everyone, whether this be students, staff or guests, had a great week and we can wait to begin planning next year’s British Science Week!
