Explore and Soar
Sunday 19th March 3:00pm - 4:30pm
HistoryWorks is leading activities at the Cambridge Museum of Technology, Education Room, The Old Pumping Station, Cheddars Lane 01223 398650, CB5 8LD
As part of the Science Festival Historyworks ran an exciting workshop, exploring forces and programming alongside Jonny Austin from BBC micro:bit and volunteers from Cambridge Museum of Technology and the University of Cambridge.
Children and their families enjoyed creating their own pterosaur gliders from cardboard and thin bendable wire.
They then tested out their creations to see how far they would travel, seeing if they could alter the distance they travelled by altering the wing shape of the glider.
They also created their own rockets out of paper and launched them using a plastic tube and pop bottle, seeing how far they could launch them, depending on the amount of force they used launched their rockets from their pop bottle launch pads!
There were lots of giggles as the rockets were launched, with some having rather dramatic launches and travelling somewhat further than expected!
The children particularly enjoyed the programming part of the workshop, using the BBC micro:bit to write their own code to create a countdown for a rocket launch, with Jonny Austin from the BBC micro:bit foundation on hand to teach them some programming and coding skills.
Jonny was amazed to see how quickly they picked up the programming and how many of them used some of the coding skills they’d learnt at school to help them with this. He was really impressed with how apt them were at it, with some even helping to debug code that hadn’t worked!
The afternoon ended in style with Jonny launching a pop bottle rocket, with a BBC micro:bit attached to it, which started a countdown to the launch and also measured the distance the rocket travelled, which was a great end to an action packed afternoon!
For more information about the Science Festival 'Explore and Soar' event visit:
http://www.sciencefestival.cam.ac.uk/events/explore-and-soar
For more information about the Cambridge Museum of Technology visit:
http://www.museumoftechnology.com/
