This morning, Reception and KS1 had a special science assembly about light and sound led by Adrian. First of all, we started by learning about shadows. We learnt that the closer that we get to the light source, the bigger the shadow gets and the further away that we get from the light source, the smaller the shadow gets. Some volunteers came up the front to show us this using puppets and the projector. Adrian then asked us to predict whether we thought that one person could make two shadows and most of us said no. However, Adrian showed us that this is in fact possible by using two light sources. We were amazed! Adrian then asked us to think about a window. He asked us whether a window lets light through or not and we said no because it is made from glass. From this, Adrian then showed us the shadow for a magnifying glass and how the plastic on the outside made a circular shadow but the glass in the middle made no shadow. We then explored colour mixing. Adrian chose a volunteer to come and colour a bottle of clear water. Yellow and blue were added and then Adrian asked us to predict which colour they would make once they were mixed together. Most of us predicted green and we were correct. Adrian explained that these colours had been mixed in water so we couldn’t undo them. However, he showed us how we can mix colours using a spinning propellor controlled by a motor and undo the colour mixing by stopping the motor. We had great fun predicting what colours would be made when the motor was turned on and the colours were mixed together. Then Adrian wowed us all by making a rainbow on the ceiling using light and water. This was definitely one of our favourite parts. For the second part of the assembly, we learnt all about sound. We started off by listening to same rain shakers. We then thought how we could make a rain shaker louder. The children predicted that we can either shake it harder or add more objects into the rain shaker e.g. peas. We then listened to the difference between a shaker with 1 pea, 10 peas and 100 peas and found out that our prediction was correct. Wow the 100 peas were loud! Adrian then showed us how you can make quiet objects louder by scraping them against hard materials, by using our mouth or by adding more force. Lyla demonstrated adding more force to make things louder by hitting a drum with a tube. We then explored high and low sounds using the keyboard. We listen to Adrian’s sound on the keyboard in a high pitched voice and a low pitched voice using different sides of the piano and we also listened to Adrian making high and low pitch sounds by changing the length of the straw whilst blowing into it. Finally, Adrian left us with two challenges. He asked us to think about the following questions next time it is sunny: How can you make your shadow not touch your feet for a moment? How can you make your shadow disappear? If any of the Reception, Year 1 or Year 2 children complete any of the experiments themselves at home to show you, please send any pictures via Class Dojo as we would love to see them.
