Forty Lagan College students in year 9 had the amazing opportunity to work alongside the National Trust as part of National Science Week 2010. Miss Ritchie and twenty students went to Minnowburn on Monday 15th March and had great fun making habitat piles and underground cities for insects! The area at Minnowburn/ Shawsbridge is owned and managed by the National Trust and therefore our students were doing their bit for the environment and helping the small team at Minnowburn. We were digging large holes, dragging fallen trees, watching out for frogs and identifying ancient oak trees.  

We all had lunch at the rose garden then wandered up to the Giants Ring to learn about archaeology of the site and its distant past, followed by some hill rolling! All the students had a brilliant time and were exhausted by the end of the day.

Lagan College would like to thank the National Trust for giving us a fun filled day and making us feel so welcome!

This week in Science Club we had a ’squeaky pop’ contest where the pupils carried out a chemical reaction that produced hydrogen gas.  They then collected the hydrogen gas and tested it with a lit splint to see who had made the ‘best’ hydrogen.

Congratulation to Jonathan Smyth who’s hydrogen gave the most impressive squeaky pop!

Next week will be the last week for Science Club this year - everyone welcome in Sc3 next week!!

We rounded off an extremely successful National Science Week with a visit from Paul McCrory from Think-Differently.  Paul is a fantastic scientist and amazed over 300 students from Years 8, 9 and 10 with his Magic, Science or Mystery demonstrations.

Approximately 380 students were able to experience the Pharmacists in Schools, National Trust visits and Think-Differently demonstrations.  In addition, over 600 students took part in the video competition - results will be published soon.

We made it to the top

On 16^th Mrach a group of Year 9 students, including myself, travelled to the National Trust’s Divis Mountain site and were greeted by three very friendly and helpful National Trust Rangers called Mick, Lynn and Dermott.  

They helped the students participate in four main activities, pond dipping, searching for insects, looking at the insects and pond creatures and of course climbing the mighty Divis Mountain which took around an hour and twenty minutes, but was worth it for the beautiful sights that could be seen from the summit including Belfast City centre, Strangford Lough, Scrabo Tower, the Mournes and the Belfast countryside.  

But my highlight had to be meeting Delilah the frog who caught and released in the pond.  The boys found some frog spawn when they were pond dipping which we looked at under the microscope and also returned to where it was found.  Overall we had a great day

Louise Rattery Year 9

Our Wee Day Out

The first thing we did with the National Trust was go pond dipping.  Our group found a frog which we named Delilah and we also found water boatman.  While we were doing that the boys were finding insects and then the groups swapped.  When we went insect hunting we found lots of things like worms, slugs, spiders, millipedes, beetles, centipedes, woodlouse and many more. 

After all that hard work it was time for lunch.  After lunch we went on a long walk up Divis Mountain, we were all tired afterwards and all in all it was a very good day.

Rebecca, Laura, Shannon and Jude Year 9

We would like to say a big thank you to the National Trust, Mick, Lynn Dermott for enabling us to visit Divis Mountain and for leaning so much while we were there.

Some students from years 9 and 10 enjoyed a fantastic experience on Friday 12^th March.  A group of pharmacy students and their lecturer attended the College to enable the students to see what it would be like to be a pharmacist for a few periods.

On Thursday 4^th March 2010 a group of Year11 students made their way to W5 to spend the morning thinking about the lesser known topic of Near -Earth Objects (NEOs)

What’s that you might ask?  Well, as a number of Lagan students will now be able to tell you; it is an area of Physics concerned with studying the objects that move through space (comets and asteroids) and could potentially strike the Earth. 

By taking part in a number of fun activities students learnt that NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) invest a lot of time and money monitoring these objects – and for important reasons.  These objects vary in size: from small meteorites which hit the Earth regularly (such as the one reported by our local news in Jan 2010); to very large objects which have the potential to wipe out our civilisation (this was illustrated to us by the KT event which scientists believe to have wiped out the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago). 

So how do our governments plan to protect us from this latter treat?  Well, Lagan students are now aware of a number of potential ways to deflect an oncoming object and in keeping with this theme the session went on to introduce everyone to some basic rocket building techniques.  Given the resulting test demonstrations, let’s hope Ben’s team will be around to help us with rocket building in 2036 when a large object called Apophis could be on a direct collision course with Earth!

Keep up the good work NASA and ESA.  For more information go to:  http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/

National Science week starts on Friday March 12th.  To celebrate this year, we are doing lots of wonderful activities.

Friday March 12th - Pharmacists in Schools will be visiting and students will get the chance to become a Pharmacist for the day.

Monday March 15th - Miss Ritchie will be taking Yr 9 students to Minnowburn to work with the National Trust.

Tuesday March 16th - Miss Wightman will be taking a group of Yr 9 students to Divis Mountain to work with the National Trust.

Thursday March 18th - the Think Differently Roadshow will be visiting the college and we hope that 300 students will have the chance to see some amazing science.

Also, there is a competition running for Yr 8 - Yr 10 students throughout the week - students will have the opportunity to become a news reporter for Lagan College Science TV and produce a news report.   These will be posted on this web page and there are fantastic prizes for the winners in each category - ask your science teacher for more details.