St Mary's School Calne

Planet Sci-Cast Competition

Last term, teams of UV Form St Mary’s girls entered a UK wide competition to make a mini-movie explaining a scientific principle for Planet Scicast.  Planet SciCast aims to raise the profile of science demonstrations as a way to engage children and young people, and to get more people doing these demonstrations themselves.  They give training in schools on how to make demonstration videos and the UV Form chose to demonstrate principles of genetics and ice-cream (!) to a non-scientist.
The Physics team churned their own delicious ice cream by cooling double cream custard in a tin surrounded by an ice and salt mixture.  The Biology team chose to explain why offspring look similar to their parents, by constructing Reebops (marshmallow organisms). The girls explained what happens in random assortment of alleles during meiosis and the random fertilization of an egg by a sperm. 

The entries were judged in Science Week in March and we are delighted to announce that the girls in the Biology team have been chosen as finalists in the competition and will be attending the awards ceremony on 25th April, where the overall winner will be announced.  To see competition entries and find out more go to www.planet-scicast.com, in the search facility type REEBOPS and this will take you to the Biology team’s video.