The Science Department: Home

Mid-Year exams
Year 9
Year 9 will be sitting an "End of Key Stage 3" exam. This will be split up into 20 minutes of Biology, Chemistry and Physics (1 hour in total). Questions will be predominantly from the areas studies with us: KS3 Inheritance and Evolution, KS3 Earth and Atmosphere and KS3 Engineering.

Year 10
Year 10 students will be sitting a GCSE paper 1 for Biology, Chemistry and Physics. However, as students have not yet finished all of the content for paper 1, the 1 hour 15 minute exams have each been shortened to 1 hour and had the content removed that they have not finished. A full list of paper 1 content can be found here. We have removed Bioenergetics from the Biology paper, Energy changes from the Chemistry paper and Atomic structure & radiation from the Physics paper.

Year 11
Year 11 will sit full GCSE paper 2 in each science. Details can be found here.

Why don't you just add more salt?
Every winter, up and down the country, people add salt to roads and paths. This melts the ice...Job Done! Well, it is a little more complicated that that. In year 11 (Chemical analysis), we learn that adding salt into water makes the water "impure" which lowers the melting point from 0°C to a melting range of -2°C to -8°C depending on the concentration. When we add salt, it needs to be worked into the ice in order to make it a solution and roads rely on vehicles driving over it and paths rely on pedestrians.

In reality, when we arrive at school and it is covered in ice and/or snow, we can add salt but it needs to be trodden in for it to melt the ice and if it is too cold, no matter how much salt you add, it simply will not help.

Year 9 Science:
Today you need to research the atmospheres on other planets and moons. Before starting, ensure that you can recall the 4 main gases in our own atmosphere and their abundance.
Start by looking for similarities and differences in the atmospheres, can they be grouped together? What are the reasons for these variations? Why is Earth such an anomaly?
Suggested sources:
Bob the Alien's information table.
Bob's type of planet.
Compound chem's data table.
NASA's data table.
Nasa's summary.
When you have all of this information, make your own basic summary in a Word document. List common trends and anomalies. You should also explain why Earth is an anomaly. Enjoy.

When you have finished that, look into the realities of "Manned missions to Mars". Some groups expect humans to visit Mars within 30 years, what are the logistics, barriers and solutions to getting people there...and back?

Britain's dirtiest energy source
With Britain's last remaining coal fired power station finally closed, of the remaining energy resources, which is the most negative for our environment? This story is very relevant to the Physics topic Energy.
Read more on the BBC news website.

Land-Based in the news
Local changes to "use of land" stir up local people. Is it fair that local people can have so much say into how a farmer can use their land? Read more on the Sentinel website.

Finally - a glimpse of the Northern Lights from Stoke-on-Trent. Every time it happens, I miss it. Not the perfect picture but you can see the green on the right that fades to purple in the middle. The green caused by interactions of oxygen with electrons and the purple caused by the interactions of nitrogen with electrons.

Great news to students who struggle to learn formulae. The UK government has extended the Covid support for 3 more years by giving the enhanced formula sheet of GCSE physics. Read the full story here. Does learning the formulae make you a better scientist or just better at learning formulae?

The "Curriculum Health Check" section has gone live on all GCSE science pages now. Please be aware that this is the first time that I have seen them in HTML and am now going through the job of editing them when I find formatting errors. Enjoy, hope to be ready by September.

One of my A-level chemists has recently been accepted into the prestigious school of veterinary science at the university of Liverpool. Congratulations and thanks for the squishy cow, I shall always treasure it!