St Mary's Academics Attend Science Fair

The Applied physics team from St Mary's University, Twickenham recently attended the Science Fair organised by SPARK and STEMNET aiming to get more school children interested in science. The fair took place on Wednesday 16th July at Kingsley Academy, Hounslow and involved Year 7 pupils who took place in a variety of practical tasks in an attempt to promote interest in the Sciences and associated study. SPARK is the trading name of Hounslow Education Business Charity whose mission is to work with education and business to prepare people for working life and enhance their employability through practical, accredited and inspiring work-related experiences. Similarly STEMNET (the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network) 'creates opportunities to inspire young people in STEM subjects. St Mary's staff and students from the Physics Department delivered two workshops which took the pupils through four hands-on experiments. The topics included; building an electromagnet, formation of sound in materials, observing colours through their wavelengths and the electronics that make a calculator work. Teachers and students alike engaged with the activities showing lots of curiosity and interest. One teacher said, "I never thought that such simple objects like wine glasses and water could be used so effectively to teach a physical concept such as sound formation in a classroom, I may adopt that particular experiment in my physics classes." St Mary's Applied Physics lecturer Dr Elisabetta Canetta said, "It was incredibly exciting and rewarding to see the pupils so engaged with the experiments. They enjoyed ‘playing’ with physics and seeing in action what they were taught in the classroom. Also the teachers were engaged actively with the physics experiments and helped the pupils to make the connection between theory and practice. The workshops were a success and our wonderful STEM outreach team, composed by Applied Physics staff and students, received a well-deserved recognition from SPARK"