Getting Ready for British Science Week

In case you haven't heard - and where have you been??

British Science Week takes place  10th - 18th March.

This past week we have been collecting our resources for our BSW events - my postman always asks me what I've bought this time - he loves my job!!
Parcels have been arriving sometimes with chemicals, sometimes weird things - like 500g of hydrogel balls, sometimes everyday but we will not be using it that way!

We have 150 baby nappies - toddler size - for a workshop on 17th.

We also have 2000 paper mini muffin cases and 100s of tubes of bubble gum fragranced oil for bath bombs not to mention 15kg of bicarbonate of soda!!

I shall be making up 5 litres of PVA this weekend for slime.

Helen has just been to buy 2 litres of vinegar because we plan to do our giant freaky hand demo which was such a hit at Big BangNW last summer

One of the things I love about social media is the fact that so many schools especially primary schools have now got really active Twitter accounts and use them to share the excitement of whatever they are getting up to.
For example on World Book Day my feed was crammed with pictures of 100s of children and teachers dressed up.
Lots of the schools we visit then follow us so as a courtesy we follow back and this means we get a glimpse into their everyday world.

Right now schools and organisations are gearing up for British Science Week. In fact many schools have already started - we are out this week in schools and we are fully booked for the main week.
I am loving seeing the ideas, experiments and events that schools have planned.

AllAboutSTEM worked with Birkenhead School to run a mini BigBangNearMe for uniformed organisations last week. They filmed and photographed the activities and shared them on Twitter so we saw some very excited cubs and brownies having a go at experiments and watching a science show but what I was really impressed with was that the school pupils were doing the experiments - what a great way to inspire the next generation!! Well done!

Just today I've been out in the garden with my hubby going through a demonstration called Lilac Flame  (using potassium permanganate and glycerine to apparently spontaneously combust and produce copious smoke and a lilac coloured mini volcano)
Our neighbours know we are science mad and were laughing at us but hubby is doing this demo as part of a lecture and needed to see quite how violent (or not) it would be so that he can do an accurate risk assessment for the university he is visiting.

this isn't a picture of him doing it....we were outside and there was much more smoke than flame!

There will be talks, debates, science parties and of course lots of demonstrations especially on Thursday 16th when teachers and technicians are encouraged to share in DEMO DAY. We will be out in school doing our All Change show that day which will have lots of demos and we plan to teach the staff of that school how to do a demo - they don't know it yet!

this is the anti gravity bottle demo which we will be teaching staff

I do hope your school is able to take part and that you have a great time.