Ramaeba Primary School

On Wednesday we visited Ramaeba Primary School where we worked with 140 learners from 9am till 3pm. During our time at this school we conducted 7 activities as the pupils were very fast finishing their designs. Starting with stethoscopes and straw rockets, we then moved to conductive tape circuits and building earthquake resistant structures. Finishing with the Life on Mars workshop, fabric maze and hand-held radio game.

The earthquake resistant structures and their size compared to the pupil

The pupils in the school were really quick at grasping the engineering concepts which then allowed them to be more creative in their designs. One testament of this are the taller and larger earthquake resistant buildings the students made just from paper. In previous schools, we have used skewers for these workshops, but as we ran out and they were scarce in the local shops, we had to improvise with different materials. However, this limitation did not stop the pupils from creating very stable structures that we tested with vigorous shaking.

The finished circuit and the students finding where the single transmission line is under the blanket

Another great highlight from this school was that the learners just recently covered the basic concepts of electronic circuits, therefore our activity of making circuits from conductive tape was right up their alley. The pupils knew the difference between series and parallel circuit and by using an analogy of water hose that requires a source and a hose and a nozzle, they understood the importance of having a closed circuit without any short or open circuits.

Using the fabric maze, the students could once again learn about wireless power transfer. We used the knowledge from the conductive tape circuits where we also taught the pupils the importance of having a source of electrical energy in order to get the LED to light up. We then compared it to the LED lighting up just from hovering the rectennas over the single transmission line.

The students lined up for straw rocket competition and a letter we have received from the pupils

We finished the day off with the students coming up with ideas for products that could make life on Mars possible. The students again came up with brilliant ideas, including weighted boots, self-heating socks, more trees and oxygen collection systems and many more. One of our favourites was a very practical student who suggested that to live on Mars, we should just layer up and wear scarves times 2, gloves times 8 and jacket times 6. We really liked this sustainable thinking that avoids over-engineered solutions. We were also delighted to see so many students enthusiastic and talk about their ideas in front of the whole class. You can view these ideas in the gallery below.

Head Teacher, Ramaeba Primary School

“I think the kids did enjoy a lot. It doesn't happen a lot for them to have visitors to teach them about science. I believe it was great and they enjoyed it and they have learned a lot. They are going to visit it in our syllabus, even though we haven’t talked about some of the things like the circuits, for the next term it will be really good and easier for us to refer, they will remember.”

Life on Mars Gallery: