Science News

Australian Science Olympiad

We would like to wish all our hard-working Olympiad students good luck for the Australian Science Olympiad Examinations. This is a very challenging competition and we are proud to note that we have record numbers of students entering every category of the competition – Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Earth and Environmental Science and Junior Science!

Students in the SCEGGS Teams have attended weekly or twice-weekly training sessions (including Friday afternoons!) since the beginning of the year. A particularly big shout-out goes to Zahra Ridling, who regularly attended Chemistry, Physics AND Biology Training sessions! Training sessions were run after-school at Sydney Grammar School by the wonderful teachers Dr Sheridan, Ms Mendes and Dr McCarron, and we thank these dedicated teachers very much for their time and effort. The training sessions have also helped to cement an excellent collaboration between SCEGGS and Sydney Grammar students.

National Youth Science Forum (NYSF) Entries Closing Soon!

Just a quick reminder that if you are in Year 11 and are interested in attending a Science Camp during the December/January Holidays, entries are closing at the end of this month. It is an excellent opportunity to meet like-minded people and learn about cutting edge Science. It also involves an opportunity to travel overseas to one of the International Youth Science Forums if selected.

National Science Week

National Science week is coming closer (14-24 August at SCEGGS), and the Science Leaders have been brainstorming and researching to make sure we have the best year yet! To start, we will be having a Super Science Bake Off, where students can enter their best “Science-Themed Cake”. So, get thinking and get your Chef’s Hats’ on! Here is Mrs Sharma’s first effort (though I’m sure you can do better!):

If you have any favourite Science experiments you would like to conduct for National Science Week, let the Science Leaders or Mrs Sharma know and we’ll see what we can do!

Science Club Term 3

Science Club has started back this term on our usual Friday lunch-times. This week students investigated optical spectroscopy (often used by scientists to determine the composition of stars and galaxies). Students used spectroscopes to observe reflected sunlight as well as the light emitted by excited samples of particular elements. Then they built their own spectroscopes using diffraction gratings and cardboard.

Mia Sharma
Science Teacher