St Stephen Churchtown Academy has opened its very own ‘Phiz Lab’, made possible by the generous support of The Ogden Trust, a charitable foundation established in 1999. The Ogden Trust exists to promote the teaching and learning of physics and St Stephen Churchtown Academy is the lead school in a partnership of 10 Aspire Academy Trust primary schools across Cornwall.  

The Ogden Trust
The new Phiz lab will allow children to experience science in an awe-inspiring way, raising aspirations in STEM subjects and making it accessible and exciting to all learners. The lab will be open for use by other Aspire schools as well as offering opportunities for community involvement including STEM clubs and twilight sessions.

Staff members, students, parents and members of the community came together to celebrate a day of science learning on Tuesday 13^th June. The day began with an official ribbon cutting ceremony followed by pupil workshops during the day and a series of parent/student investigations later in the afternoon. 

The Year 3 children participated in the first workshop of the day making ‘bottle rockets’ and launching them on the field! The children learnt all about what rockets are used for and why plane engines are not able to power rockets up into space, summed up simply by Y3 pupil, Miller:

“There’s no air in space”

In the afternoon, the Year 4/5 children learnt all about filtration in space and how astronauts recycle their own urine in an investigation titled ‘Astronaut Wee’. The children competed against each other in an investigation where they had to filter ‘astronaut wee’ into a drinkable liquid. They could ‘buy’ filtration items from a ‘shop’ and were awarded points based on clarity, acidity and how much volume was left after filtration. 

Finally, after school parents were invited in to participate in an experiment layering liquids and different densities. Participants had to ‘predict’ what order they thought the liquids would sit based on their density, then complete the activity to conclude whether their predictions were correct or not.

Parents were asked what they thought about the lab:

A once in a lifetime opportunity to engage children in a deeper understanding of science

The children were equally enthused by their experiences:

It's amazing! We get to do really cool experiments