Starch

31st March:

Today we did the final part of our work for the Discovery Science award. We were learning about starch and where you might find it. Starch is a carbohydrate and is found in plants, so it can be found in some foods, and also things like paper. Years ago people used to use starch to make the collars on shirts stand up nice and straight, but this usually led to lots of itchy necks!

Our job today was to test eight everyday things to see whether they contained starch. First of all we had to guess, or estimate, whether we thought they would contain starch, and record this on our log sheet. Then we got to test our ideas out. We used iodine, which makes things with starch in them turn a dark black colour when you drop it on them. It looks like black paint or ink from a pen. We used a syringe to suck up iodine from a jar and then drop it onto each item. Iodine can leave stains on clothes, so we had to be careful when handling it!


Check out some of our work - can you guess which items had starch in them?

 

Rhys was a great help with filling up the syringes with iodine
 

Biscuit

Bread

Flour

Potato

Apple

Paper/cardboard

Pasta

Bull Island

On Thursday, we headed off to visit Bull Island as part of our Discovery Science work. Despite it's name, this is not an island with bulls on it, but a nature reserve with some extremely rare animals, insects and plants living on it.

Our host, Pat, gave us lots of information about the animals and the things that live there. He told us about eco systems and how important it is to keep the island going as a nature reserve. He had plenty of cool photos and interesting facts for us.

Next we had lunch and had a look at some of the animals on display in cases in the centre. There were plenty of crabs and sea creatures, as well as some pretty real-looking birds!

Finally it was time to head out and explore the island to see if we could see any of the wildlife that Pat had told us about. We saw Brent geese, which come all the way from Canada to Ireland for the winter, a heron, a falcon, a crab and plenty of other shells of sea creatures. We finished off the day with a run around on the beach. All in all we had a great day and certainly learned plenty.

Check out those claws!

 


Pat taught us lots about the wildlife on the island
 

 



Listening carefully to Pat

  
 

Fun at the beach!

 

Ryley and Isabelle found a crab
 

 

Catapults

On Wednesday we took off up to the hall to carry out a science experiment - and have a bit of fun in the process! We were looking at forces and things that can create energy. We used an elastic band tied to a clip, which was attached to a ruler. There were four different kinds of elastic band: small, medium, large, and extra large. Our task was to try out each one and see which could send a small paper ball the furthest. To measure we used a measuring tape and we recorded each distance on our log. We had great fun trying this out and we had some interesting results. We also discussed the reasons why some paper balls went further than others. If you can think of any, make sure to let us know by commenting below!

 

 

 

3D shape hunt

Last week Second Class were learning about 3D shapes in Maths, so we took ourselves out into the yard to see if we could find any in the school. We found loads - can you tell us what they are? Leave a comment at the bottom if you can.