This year, our KS4 students have spent Science Week exploring Space. From the 13th to the 17th of March, through debates, competitions, group activities and laboratory experiments, they have embarked on a journey assessing their skills, as if they were about to join NASA.
Could you survive in Space? What would you need? Imagine that you are part of a special crew which has been scheduled to rendezvous with the mothership on the lit up surface of the moon. Due to a technical problem, the landing takes place 200 miles from the meeting point and much of the equipment has been damaged. You have to choose the 15 most critical items for survival, to be able to reach the rendezvous point. Which ones will you choose? And why?
Students have had to find answers and explain their reasoning to these and other questions, such as: How do you calculate the journey time of an un-manned spaceship? How long is a light year? Who was the first man on the Moon? Could humans colonise Space? And, communicate with an extra-terrestrial? Questions like these where puzzled out and debated individually, in groups or as a class. Each answer providing understanding and new discoveries about the fascinating world of outer Space.