Wednesday 9 March 2016

Science Fair Project - the final sprint



 

It's that time of year, we're entering the final few weeks before the finished projects are displayed to the Oak House world. The playgrounds are amok with activity with students beginning to carry out their experiments using the other students as their participants. Some of the most interesting projects include:

  • Do different types of chocolate affect our ability to learn new abilities using hand-eye coordination?
  • How many values can you understand at a glance (without counting) and what affects this? 
  • When should we add the milk to a coffee to ensure it stays warm for longer?
  • Will smaller children endure a choice they dislike to gain a greater reward, or will they choose something they prefer to gain a smaller reward.
  • What affects a person’s ability to repeat musical notes?
This last project was inspired by the famous experiments on learning:

One of the findings was that chess masters have an amazing memory for patterns on the chess board – able to recall the positions of all the pieces after only a brief glance. Follow-up work showed that they only have this ability if the patterns conform to possible positions in a legal game of chess. When pieces are positioned on the board randomly, however, chess grandmasters have as poor memories as anyone else.

What will the outcomes be? Come to visit us on the 20th of April for the Science Fair day when the students will present their experiments to everyone in the school and visitors.