July 18 2016 | Kent & Medway | Views: 1528
Students at Saint Georges School in Gravesend had their very own Chemistry at Work day! Ambassadors and presenters working in the Chemical Industry or for an organisation using Chemistry in their work, visited the school and led a series of workshops to encourage the students to see how extensive the range of careers in chemistry.
Within the workshops, students were introduced to a range of chemical processes, undertook experiments and recorded and thought about the results.
Melanie Davies from Creative Space held a Cosmic Chemistry Planetarium Show, taking students on a trip into space, finding out about the chemistry of stars and planets along the way. Describing the chemical and molecular processes of star and planet formation, from giant molecular clouds in the Milky Way to star forming regions in the Orion Nebula.
Ambassador Ges Cocker got the students to use chemical energy to design and build a model car that travels the furthest and fastest.
Kate Skidmore & Simon Goatcher from DSTL gave a short presentation on how chemistry enables them to detect explosives and students got to do a hands on demonstration of particle detection.
Canterbury Christ Church University Forensic Team Dave Belsom and Barry Blackburn looked at Blood Spatters, where students used Luminol to test for the presence of blood, learning about the use of Luminol and discovering one of the limitations to this technique. Then Sarah-Jane Meier and Ami Fletcher explained the role of a forensic chemist and students had the opportunity to do practical work, including enhancing and comparing latent (invisible) fingerprints.
Min Keating from Medway School of Pharmacy looked at Modern Medicines & their Plant Origins, she used examples of plants that are still used by medical herbalists. Some of these plants are used for manufacturing today’s medicines as well as for culinary purposes.
Samantha Booth from The University of Greenwich enabled students to learn first hand about Chemiluminescent Glow Sticks, In her workshop, students explored the chemistry involved in making glow sticks and they produced their own luminescent glow stick, learning the chemistry of how it emits such strong light without a bulb or a battery.
