One pleasant, sunny day, four students from 8A science met at the front of school at 7:45am. Well, I have to admit it was a bit of a drag waking up so early in the morning but we had a full day of exciting scientific events and activities waiting to surprise us at the University of Western Sydney.
We began our exciting journey on foot, hurrying to keep up with Miss Bevilaqua's long strides and constant mutterings over her shoulder at us…" Girls, we are going to miss our train if you don't hurry up!", and…" Girls, we're going to be late and they'll start without us if you don't hurry up!" sigh…" Girls, we are on a tight schedule here so can you please hurry up!"
We were so relieved when we just made it on our train because it beat us to the platform. We ended up babbling on and on about random things, concerning random people for the whole trip to Parramatta, which lasted about half an hour. We then jumped off the train and used our "exceptionally outstanding" navigational skills to find a bus station which surprisingly didn't take too long. After a while with almost all hope of finding the University gone, we finally decided to clamber onto a bus after a group of students and an adult that mentioned something about the University of Western Sydney, liquid nitrogen, and a rubber duck…
This was a smart move as the bus driver agreed to take us straight to the uni which he mentioned was really close from the bus stop. After about five minutes the bus driver dropped us off across the footpath. We made our way across a wide stretch of lawn, to a large building although suddenly figured that the Department of Science building were a little walk nearby. Once again, we set off across the lush, green lawn down another pathway and wound our way through the car park to be confronted by a huddle of smaller buildings. Judging from the sign post, we had finally reached our destination. With triumphant high-fives and exaggerated shoulder-punches for this great success we pranced noisily into the building along with our new-found school buddies.
We rushed past various rooms, peeking into each window and examining interesting specimens as we went by. We immediately hushed ourselves when we scrambled into a room filled with bickering students (4) from a number of different schools. As soon as we took our seats we were silenced by our host which introduced with safety rules ‘ugh', gave us a run-through of our day and assigned us into 3 large groups. After our delightful welcome, we moved on with the other students in our allocated group to complete our first series of activities. We entered a room filled with some more interesting scientific equipment, two long white benches equipped with tall stools, situated evenly in the centre of the room.
"It was compulsory for every student to wear a long white laboratory coat and goggles during each and every experiment in case we are exposed to life threatening chemicals we would not easily suffer or sustain injuries"
We began with a white carnation and a lot of test tubes filled with coloured dyes. We cut off a small piece from the bottom of the stem of our carnations and placed it in a test tube of any colour. While we waited to see if we could demonstrate the movement of water in plants, we moved on to another two activities. Colour chromatography was next. Each member of our group took a piece of chromatography paper and marked 4 dots, 1.5cm from the bottom of the paper, then placed it into a jar, the bottom just touching the surface of solvent (ammonia) and left it to push the colours out. Our instructor then led us to an area in the room with an enclosed space surrounding it. She poured some potassium what's-its-name into a mound shape and added 2 drops of glycerol and BAM! A white flame burst out of nowhere, creating heat, light, carbon dioxide and water, but the funny thing was seeing my team mates' faces as they shrieked at the violent reaction. She then motioned us back to our carnations and the room was filled with oohs and ahhs, for each white carnation had turned a different colour! You could see the colour had run through the veins of each petal. Mine was orange and strangely smelled like carrots.
We were then sent off to morning tea, where we explored the nearby grounds and played 13 (a card game) while Miss B. asked us how we were enjoying our day and while we tried and failed to get some answers out of her about her wedding and husband. On our way back to the room where we met at the beginning of the day, we made a stop to the ladies where we all attempted to scare each other coming out of the cubicle which made us shriek with laughter because no one got spooked, we all wore such a neutral expression on their faces that made us laugh at us own stupidity. Miss B. then had to come and investigate and shooed us out before we could disturb any Uni students.
We made it back into the room, got assigned our next set of activities and were off to our next room. We got to make a crystal garden where plant-like coloured shapes grew slowly from inorganic salts in a solution of sodium silicate. We also tested to see if egg proteins affect the stability of foams which it did. Our instructor then announced that we would be making slime! We squirted two liquids into a zip-lock bag with a colour dye and shook our bag a little to activate the chemicals. I made two packets of slime. One with a yellow dye and another one with another two dyes which made brown. I then took two free cups, that we used for our crystal garden, and the ones that doctors give you to pee in so they can examine the contents in your urine, and so I put my yellow and brown slime into the pee cups. He he pee cups, funny!!!
We were then confronted by the TVS filming crew at lunch, which offered us an interview and asked us questions on the day we were experiencing. Not much happened at lunch other than playing with our slime, so we went back to the main room and waited for our last set of activities for the day.
We were welcomed by a different instructor in a very weird manner. He poured some liquid nitrogen from a huge bottle on the floor and I thought our feet were going to turn to ice. But they didn't, we watched in awe as the liquid nitrogen turned into a gas on the floor, it looked sort of like the smoke from a smoke machine except way, way, way cooler! I think these were the coolest set of activities of the day as we got to observe how dry ice is a solid carbon dioxide by pushing a few cubes in a balloon and watching it inflate. We got to see how the CO2 in a fire extinguisher works by placing dry ice in a tin, putting the lid back on and watching the lid fly off, hit the ceiling and clatter to the floor again. You know, it was strange no one got hit on the head with that lid, everyone was standing so close. We also cooled a rubber tube until it was breakable. It was a bit scary actually, the instructor came out of nowhere with a hammer, with eyes bulging and such excitement and pleasure written on his face. For a second there I thought he might have been a crazy psychopath that had escaped from prison years ago, had taken the identity of a person he killed while trying to escape, and was about to murder us all. Thank God I was wrong, he ended up smashing the rubber tube and it shattered like he would smash normal glass. Using a rubber duck would have probably been more entertaining though.
As a final goodbye, we were treated to some ice-cream made with liquid nitrogen, which was cool and tasted pretty good too. We also got to take home our slime, crystal gardens and balloons too, although mine popped in the grass on the way out. We caught a bus and train back to school with our school buddies whom we came to the Uni with, said our goodbyes to Miss B. and made our way home.
This was one of the most exciting excursions I've been on and I'm sure Miss Bevilaqua (now known as Mrs Harding) and my three classmates would say the same. I would recommend an excursion like this to all the students in this school because I guarantee they'll learn a lot and have heaps of fun. Thanks so much to the science department and Miss Bevilaqua for organising this trip.
By: Patricia David
