On Monday, Year 6 visited the Principia Science Centre in Malaga. The first stage of the tour began with the resident scientist capturing everyone's attention through a range of visually entertaining experiments. Some children were put in a metal cage which was hit with an electrical charge - sparks were flying but luckily it was an insulated cage!
Others were lucky to get to touch the electrostatic generator, resulting in the static electricity creating new hairstyles - just like Einstein's! Children also got to make human electrical circuits by holding hands - I think Aleksander was the only one not to flinch!
Optical illusions were created using magnets in a bowl of lentils - the children didn't realise that the smaller ball bearing, which was denser, sank to the bottom of the lentils while the one that was less dense rose - giving the illusion that the metal ball bearing had grown in size! We watched a balloon absorbing red light, making it pop while a white one reflected the light. When a black eye was drawn onto the white balloon, it popped too.
In the planetarium, we received tips on how to spot the constellations while also looking at the sun's path during the seasons. We would love to have had more time for the final stage of the trip, where we were taken around a hall with a range of different scientific phenomena including a parabolic sound reflector as well as some more optical illusions such as staring at a spiral and then looking at static objects - it made Einstein's face seem like it was changing! Looking in a special mirror, it looked like we were flying!
It was all very interesting although as the scientists were Spanish speaking, some children didn't get to grasp everything that was said, hopefully this serves as inspiration to practise Spanish even more. It was an excellent link for our native Spanish students and their Ciencias learning.
