Entry Paragraph

My group consists of Ruby and Poppy. We were assisted by Ms Dolan and Mrs Beechen as they helped us carry out the coloured fire experiment safely. For our short video submission, we decided to do a rap. We wanted to do one because we have had a previous experience, our class liked it and we learn very well about the subject whilst making the rap. The previous rap was fun and a good teaching technique. In this rap, we were asked to teach the viewer something along the lines of ‘change’. We decided to go with chemical change. We researched and found an experiment linking with chemical change, and coloured fire. We found it on https://www.thoughtco.com/cool-chemistry-experiments-604271. Our video has the following information, what chemical change is, what experiment we will do, a procedure (safety and how to do the experiment), the chemicals we needed and what they briefly are and what colours are produced. I hope you like it!

Reflection

The Science Geeks Competition (our project) is a competition where we need to produce a short video explaining and teaching the topic/theme given. The topic we received was ‘change’. The videos are assessed on science communication (was it clear and following a sequence? etc.) and entertainment (were the entrant/s passionate and creative? etc.).

I had Ruby and Poppy in my group. Overall, I think we ran quite smoothly and managed to meet the deadlines. We even had a lot of fun during the series of weeks. I wrote the script, Poppy searched for music and Ruby helped both of us. I edited the video as well. Besides that, there were some areas where I believed we could have improved on if we had another opportunity to do this again. Often at times, we got distracted. At the start, we didn’t get much stuff done. I believe if we all focused and contributed, we would have finished this much earlier. I did a lot more work than I expected. I had to work on this in my own time. I think we were a bit slow in this process. Apart from that, it was an enjoyable experience.

We did have a couple of minor disagreements. This would be like music choice, costumes and finding time to do things. However, those were resolved quickly. Because we had enough time, we would just keep searching for music until we find one we all like. The same applies to costumes, luckily we also have each other’s contacts, so we could negotiate after school. Finding times was a slightly bigger struggle, in the end, I just told them what we need to do each day. It worked and that’s how we managed to finish our video in time.

We managed our time by discussing what needed to be done and when we should get them done. We communicated often and helped each other as much as possible. We finished everything on the 4th of May. If I had another chance to do this, I think I would set up a checklist and daily/weekly plan. This would keep us more organised and less stressed.

I really enjoyed this experience, it taught me a lot about chemical change and coloured fire. For example, specific chemicals change the colour of the flame due to the electrons getting ‘excited’. They release energy which causes photons (colour) to appear. Each chemical element that the flame absorbs produces a different photon. Because of this project, I cannot wait to learn more about chemistry, our next subject!