Tuesday 26 April 2016

V is for Van (de Graaff) machine

Welcome to my posts for the A to Z Challenge 2016.
This year, I am posting 
Special School Stories
 tales from either my time as a teacher or teaching assistant within classrooms in the U.K. or from my own school days growing up around the country.


Physics at Secondary School.  There were three of us girls who had elected to take the subject at “O” level compared to thirty boys.  I had initially put down “Gardening Science” in my options and faked my parents’ signature but unfortunately for me my head of year was having none of it and so I suffered Physics as well as Chemistry.  Maybe I should say my Physics teacher suffered having me in his class as I think I rarely understood what was actually happening during the lessons and spent a lot of time day-dreaming during them.  He did however make me the star of one of his lessons when he wheeled into the classroom his Van de Graaff machine, plugged it in and then asked me to stand next to it and place my hands on the silver ball part.

This photo gives you some idea of what happened next!


Not that I can tell you much about the physics we were learning that day, however, some of it must have stuck as I finished with a B in the subject :)

Now it’s your turn – what science experiments can you remember at school?  Which of the sciences did you take and were you any good?  Were you in the minority for any of your lessons?  In which lesson/s were you the star?  Leave a comment below and let me know :)

6 comments:

  1. I was never a science star. The key was getting a lab partner who liked it. I was a decent assistant.

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  2. Since I was on the business track, I think I was only required to take general science and I don't remember much about that.
    But I think I would have tried to get away with the Gardening Science scam too. :)

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  3. I took biology in high school. We dissected frogs. I thought that was horrible. But then, years later after I had kids, I decided I was going to be a nurse and I had to take many of the sciences in college. My favorite was A & P where we dissected pigs, snakes, cows eyeballs, sheep's brains. It was all fascinating by this point!!

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  4. I did that at a science museum a few years ago. It took me right back to junior high science class!

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  5. Actually what I did remember was an earthquake in WA state I was in and our biology teacher running after the experiment cart that was on wheels and started rolling. No one hurt but pretty vivid memory!

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  6. Actually what I did remember was an earthquake in WA state I was in and our biology teacher running after the experiment cart that was on wheels and started rolling. No one hurt but pretty vivid memory!

    ReplyDelete