Y5/6 Science trip to the Royal Institution – don’t try this at home!

This Monday, students from Years 5 & 6 were invited to the Science on Stage event at the Royal Institution organised by the Ri and Benjamin Franklin House.
We learnt all about Benjamin Franklin’s observations of the links between electricity and lightning, his famous kite experiment in a thunderstorm to collect electricity and why tall structures need lightning rods to keep them safe. We witnessed 250 volts of electricity sparking through a tesla coil but that this was nothing compared to the 1 billion volts of electricity created through lightning!
Next, staff from the Ri demonstrated some of the classic fire experiments creating different colours using chemicals such as sodium (orange) and how fireworks work. Plus they told us some of their favourite electrical jokes:
Why do people not like electrons?
Because they’re so negative!
Finally, after a quiz trail around the beautiful Ri building, there were adventures aplenty with liquid nitrogen with the National Physical Laboratory team who used the lower freezing point of liquid nitrogen to smash tulips and tennis balls once submerged in the liquid.

“The sessions were really good and I loved seeing the experiments – I want to buy some liquid nitrogen now!”
“I loved seeing all of the different colours that fire could be using different chemicals.”
“There were lots of interesting facts to learn and it showed us so many different areas of science.”
“My favourite part was seeing the balloons inflating and deflating with the liquid nitrogen.”

Thanks to the Royal Institution and Benjamin Franklin House for inviting us to such a great event.