On Tuesday 28th November we went to AIRBUS (Stevenage). When we arrived, we met a lady called Shell and she told us about what they do at Airbus. The first thing we did was explore their science room where there were many different things and experiments to try.
The things I tried were the lightning ball (plasma globe) and the centrifuge spinner. After that, we met an engineer called David who was helping to construct the Exo Mars Rover. He talked to us and answered our questions about the robot (which is probably going to be launched around the year 2020) and Mars itself. David also showed us the yard where they test the robots; it is exactly like the surface of Mars. He also told us about the prototypes: Bridget, Bradley, Bruno and Brian. We learnt that Mars has two moons: Phobos (Greek god of fear) and Deimos (Greek god of terror).
Next, we made electric buzzer games. We used polystyrene, bendy wire, batteries, red or black insulated wire, and lots of tape! It was very difficult. The aim was to get the wire wand through the bendy wire track without making it buzz.
When that was over, Shell (the ‘Queen of Science’) showed us the most amazing light demonstration ever! The lights were turned off. Then we split light through a triangular prism and looked at transparent, opaque and translucent shapes. We saw that light travels in a straight line by blowing talcum powder in the path of a laser light. Then she had three lamps; one blue, one red and one green. Lights don’t mix like you think they do; if you mix coloured lights, they all turn white. We also looked at UV light and interestingly, bees see the world in UV so they know whether a plant has pollen in it.
In conclusion, we had a very fun-packed day and if you get a chance, we recommend going to AIRBUS. We learned so much!
By Leila, Mya, Evan, Thomas and Yunus