Private School News

Science casts a spell at Greenacre

As part of National Science and Engineering week, the Science laboratories at Greenacre School for Girls in Banstead were transported into the magical world of Hogwarts when the school hosted its annual ‘Science is Fun’ evenings.
Organised by the Greenacre Science Department with the support of the Royal Society of Chemistry (Downland Section), about 80 enthusiastic ten and eleven year-old girls and boys were entranced by the spellbinding scientific demonstrations and enjoyed participating in the many exciting hands-on activities.
Children from all the local primary schools were invited to take part, free of charge, and were accompanied by their parents, who seemed to enjoy the sessions just as much as the children!
This year, there was much magic afoot as Greenacre transformed into ‘Greenwarts Academy for Magicians and Muggles’. The children spent an hour each in Potions (Chemistry), Transfiguration (Physics) and Organisms (Biology).
There were flashes and bangs in the potions laboratory, where the children created magic mist and gooey slime. They also investigated mysterious materials and magnets, helped the wizard police improve on their fingerprint techniques and extracted DNA from a piece of fruit.

The children were delighted by all the weird and wonderful experiments. When asked what they had enjoyed most about the evenings, they said…
“I could see lots of tiny things with the microscopes – it was very exciting.”
“It was really cool, especially when we made the slime.”
“The coloured flames were great – like fireworks.”
“I made a star fridge magnet to take home.”