STUDENTS at St Dympna's School, Aspley, discovered the weird and wonderful world of science when they held a whole school National Science Week convention.
Based on this year's theme “Game Changers and Change Makers", students who attended the school's science club were invited to research a topic of interest around a famous scientist in the lead up to the week-long celebrations.
Their displays at the convention held in the school hall were multi-modal and some involved 'live' demonstrations throughout the day, including an exploding volcano, light bulbs and how cogs worked.
Although much of the work was carried out at home, the students were required to attend the weekly science club to give feedback about their research and display ideas.
BCEO Education Officer for Science, Jodi-Ann Gulley, said there was a real buzz around the school as parents, grandparents and friends all supported and contributed their expertise to the success of the day.
“It was lovely also to see older students explaining the science behind their displays to the younger students," she said.
Jodi-Ann said the real value in a day like this was in building the excitement, creativity and interest in science.
“Often the sciences are considered boring or too hard, but there was none of that on display at St Dympna's.
“And we have Year 4teacher, Louise Scarffe, to thank for successfully applying for one of the National Science Week grants and making it all happen," she said.
The students were amongst more than one million people across the nation who were presented with many opportunities, in and out of the laboratory, to discover and excel in science.
St Dympna's students Olivia Mahoney and Ella Louchart said they really enjoyed being part of the science convention.
The pair built a simple x-ray machine using a torch and shining it through paper to show how it had helped change not only the medical world but also security at airports.
The Year 4 students explained this to other students who arrived in the hall to check out the fantastic experiments.
The pair said they really enjoyed explaining to the other students how an x-ray machine helped doctors to see images of internal structures of living organisms.
Olivia, who aspires to be a nurse in the future, said she had lots of fun putting her research into practice.
“I learnt cancer can be found by using an x-ray machine and if you have a broken bone it can been seen by the doctor and they can fix it."
She said Science Week was great fun and she couldn't wait until next year's convention.