Year 8 learned lots of practical plastic facts in three fun lunchtime sessions
Miss Reeves, with the help of some Sixth Form science volunteers, ran three popular Chemistry sessions for Year 8 students.
Dora, Annabel and Lucy have written about what they did and what they learned. As a result of the sessions, Annabel said,
“Chemistry has gone from being one of my ‘OK’ subjects to one of my favourites!”
By Dora
Chemistry is one of those subjects that is not my favourite, but I enjoy. When I found out that there was a club on for a few days in which we turn potatoes into plastic I got super excited. It turned out it was Chemistry!
When my friends and I got there, we were split into groups. Each group was given a potato and had to grate it. Then we were given a pestle and mortar and we were adding a small amounts of water as we were grinding the potato.
After every little bit of water, we had to put the potato through a sieve and drained the water into a cup. When we had collected enough of the drained liquid, we waited until you could see a white layer at the bottom which was the starch from the potato.
Then, we poured the water out leaving only the white starch from the bottom.
By Annabel
I was really looking forward to this lesson as we would be getting our potato-plastic results back. Some of our plastics had solidified and some of ours had not. This is because some people did not add enough glycerol.
We then had a discussion why it cannot be used as everyday plastic. Potato plastic is too soft only a little harder than an over activated slime.
Plastic is such a huge part of our everyday lives. Most of the things we pick up are made from plastic. To produce that amount of plastic we use we would need millions of potato fields.
Our teachers then had a special treat planned for us – Kahoot – a fun quiz game. The quiz was based on the dangers of plastics and fossil fuels. Chemistry has gone from being one of my ‘OK’ subjects to one of my favourite.
By Lucy
The third and final session of Chemistry Week was really exciting! We got to see our biodegradable and environmentally friendly plastic.
What surprised me the most was that everyone’s plastic was different. Some people had hard plastic and some people’s was thin. We all went around the classroom and showed each other our creations. My team got some great feedback we can use to improve on next time.
After this, we talked about how we found the project and what were our favourite bits. We really enjoyed heating our mixture on the Bunsen Burners. My group worked together over three lessons to make the plastic. Ours turned out quite thick and firm.
Next, we played some quizzes with information we used throughout the project and really enjoyed these because it tested how much I remembered whilst also being great fun. I very much enjoyed Chemistry Week and would definitely do it again.
