The Year 8 students from both Churchill and Morwell Campuses recently visited the Tech School, located in Morwell. The students participated in a range of activities which focused on the students creating their own experiment to test a hypothesis on a topic about energy. Some of the topics were – black clothes makes you hotter; a small solar panel can charge your phone indoors; keeping a fan on makes a room cooler; a hot tennis ball will bounce higher that a cold one; a microwave oven is the best way to boil water; a can of soft drink will cool quicker in the freezer than in a tub of ice water. The aim of the excursion was to connect what the students are studying in the Energy unit in Science to the processes involved in establishing and testing a hypothesis based around energy.
The students were divided into small groups and were asked to design an experiment which considered previous research on their topic, the proposed hypothesis, equipment required, the methodology and the outcomes. The students were then required to present their findings and processes to the other year 8 students and decide whether the hypothesis was confirmed, possible or busted.
