Pupils at Great Baddow High School enjoyed a wealth of activities during National Science Week. 

The Year 10 Science and Engineering students visited the Big Bang science fair at the NEC.

They ran the trip with great success last year, and students this year were looking forward to visiting the largest celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths available to students across the UK.

Despite an early start from Chelmsford, the students were inspired by the exciting hands on activities and interactive exhibits at the Big Bang Fair and were looking forward to getting back to the classroom and putting the things they had learnt to good use.

Great Baddow High School has recently taken delivery of a Seismograph, which measures earthquakes and seismic waves and will be putting the fully functional equipment on display in the School Reception and the students are looking forward to being able to use it remotely in classrooms across the school.

Headteacher, Carrie Lynch said: ‘This resource will be a fabulous asset.

"Students and visitors will see it in this central position where it will represent the importance of science within the school.’

Information writer, John Townsend gave a talk to Year Seven Science pupils and visited Baddow Hall Junior School to run a writing workshop with some of their Year Five pupils.

John Townsend writes non-fiction books, especially to encourage young people to enjoy such things as painful history or scary science with C.S.I true stories and forensic science techniques and his discussion regarding the effects of small pox and the development of the vaccination was interspersed with delightful images of the disease that both amazed and disgusted the students, but still had them all asking for more!

He said: “It was great to visit Great Baddow High School as it celebrated Science Week and I was impressed by the enthusiasm of the Year Seven pupils regarding the painful side of science and history.”

Earlier in the year, a competition was launched when the Great Baddow High School science department teamed up with the Art department to design a poster on the subject of space.

The winning posters were announced this week with one particular student going to the great effort of creating a lunar landscape with a Great Baddow Astronaut placing a flag with the school emblem into the surface of the moon depicting the famous Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong moon walk.

Another student clearly took a great deal of time to make their poster stand out, literally with an imaginative 3D design. Congratulations go to winners Jordan Ashley in Year 8 and Connor Preston in Year 9.

As the solar eclipse was taking place, Dr T Ghoneim, Head of Physics, and Andy Smith, Science Technician had their high powered telescopes set up in the school playground to try and catch a glimpse the eclipse as it happened.

Despite being fitted with solar filters especially for the occasion, visibility was limited due to the low cloud cover, however students were able to see the workings of the telescopes and caught images of the eclipse from elsewhere across the county as it was broadcast on large screens up around the school.

Students had been preparing for weeks for the eclipse, making pin hole cameras and finding out how they could safely watch the eclipse from the cameras and telescopes that were in place in all east facing rooms across the school and a Data logger was set up to measure the level of light outside during the eclipse which were used during the science lessons that followed.

As Science Week drew to a close, a group of Great Baddow students were still busy bridge building for a competition supported by AECOM and set by the Institute of Civil Engineers.

Students were tasked to design, build and test a model bridge to span 780mm and between 100 and 150mm wide.

Students tested to destruction before rebuilding to compete against other schools on Tuesday at Anglia Ruskin University, where they were rewarded for their efforts by coming in 2nd, beating all other Chelmsford based teams.