From Juniors right through to the Sixth Form – what a week we had with Amazing Animals as the theme for this year’s NHEHS Science Week, all starting with the fascinating story of the Bone Wars and how the wonderful rivalry in digging up of dinosaurs massively damaged early palaeontology !

Here at NHEHS we love when subjects work together and this week was no exception.

On Tuesday, artist/designer and inventor Darcy Turner worked with the girls and their own ideas to create huge metal sculptures of a shark and a turtle, which now hang proudly in the atrium! On Wednesday, our Sixth Form Languages Reps prepared a whole-school form time quiz on Kahoot to discover what noises animals make in different languages.

Thursday 3.14 was Pi Day and we collaborated with our Maths department to put together our Pi Recital where an awe-ins-pi-ring number of pi digits were recited, with Cleopatra victorious with 171 digits! We also approximated pi as 3.13 by putting together our version of Buffon’s Needle – throwing celery on the floor!

Our NHEHS Eco Reps brought plastic waste and climate change to the fore with an art exhibition, with model sea creatures made with our own plastic waste on display in the atrium, highlighting the need to scale back our consumption to protect our oceans.

Our wonderful catering team also got in on the act, providing tasty treats for the busy scientists including “fish pellets”, “ninja turtles” and “mischievous mice!”

Our Sixth Form Science Reps organised their own Amazing Animals activities at lunchtime every day. Biology Reps Jojo, Hana, Isabel & Esha kicked the week off with an octopus dissection, followed by the Chemistry Reps (Sarah, Amrita & Emily) who conducted messy but highly successful elephant toothpaste experiments! 

Our Physics Reps (Erin, Avani & Elizabeth) held a Butterfly Dance Party – demonstrating how butterflies see flowers by bathing the drama studio in UV light and using UV paint on banners… and each other! The Psychology Reps investigated the effects of animal psychology on humans. The Science Reps also shared some of their favourite animals and the amazing reasons why by conducting their own assembly, with the incredible Blobfish taking centre stage!

Our Sixth Form subject Reps also taught “mini” science lessons to Year 3 and 5 on Friday: Biology prepared their own red onion cells under the microscope, and looked at skulls and an ostrich egg, while in physics they strain tested strawberry laces for their ability to plastically deform! Psychology Rep Hannah challenged the girls to see how many animals they could remember in a quick memory test – many beat the average score of 7, and seeing how revisiting the learning would change this. In chemistry, the Juniors inflated a glove with a reaction between sodium bicarbonate and mild acid, then drew colourful animals on the inflated gloves!

Over in Junior School, Year 4 created a whole class mountain range for their topography project while Year 5 successfully built ‘Moon Landers.’

We had some amazing visitors come to the school throughout the week, enabling both Senior and Junior girls to get up close and personal with animals on two separate days to learn about their different adaptations, including a snake, parrot, tarantula, lizard, giant millipedes and more!  

Animal experts visited throughout the week, including a Dog Behaviour Psychologist from The Dog Trust, who dispelled myths about dogs’ behaviours, notably that dogs DO see in colour- but only yellows, mauves and blues.

Three  experts from the National History Museum came in on Wednesday to give lectures to Years 6,7 and 9 on shrinking seafood; super sharks; octopus, squid and other Cephalopods and mass extinctions. Megaladon tooth included!

We finished with a flourish with the unmissable annual visit of the Royal Institution to talk to the Year 7s on the topic of “Exploding Food”. We measured energy in food by exploding it, learned about the digestive system using a pair of tights and took part in blind tastings!

Thank you to Mr Ives, our Science Department teachers, technicians and reps for an amazing week!