Today we went to a laboratory in a university to do some science experiments! As you might guess from the title it was called Science Day. I thought it was going to be a boring old droning woman going on and on about different chemical formulas, but actually we went into a reserved university lab and did some awesome experiments. Tilly and I worked as a pair together, whilst our friend Katie and her partner, called Olivia, sat on the desk oppisite us. Even when I was told we were going to do some experiments, I had no idea we were going to use the glass test tubes and scientific bottles laid out in front of us! As a matter of fact, I presumed they were reserved for the proper scientists, but we were left all alone with some instructions and all these special equipment. They had a super cool pipet machine with the long measuring tubes stuck to the end, and they had science spatulas and racks of test tubes and bottles filled with hazardous chemicals. It was amazing when we were told to get out all the glass cork bottles and the samples and the labels and the pepsin and stuff. It did sound much more entertaining than what William said he did at school – mainly worksheets, and sometimes turning on the bunsen burner, turning it off, and repeating! Our instructions sheet looked hard, but really interesting!
However, never did it look so hard and interesting when we got going! The scientists helping left us and started filing through folders and discovering new chemicals, but a couple hovered round a desk every so often. The first step was to label four empty glass test tubes 1-4. We labeled, looked over at Katie and Olivia – only to find that they’d already labeled the test tubes with egg in them, and not the ’empty’ ones as described! We, however, did everything very orderly and labeling the tubes correctly. Everyone else apart from us, including Katie and Olivia, didn’t even have the test tubes in the racks, and there chemical bottles were all strewn over their desks! The following step, and the rest after it, were all stuff like ‘add 3ml of dionated water’ or ‘add 5ml of nictric acid’ or, if you wanted to be really scientific, ‘transfer 7ml of silver nitrate to Sample A2’ or ‘remove 3 ml of barium chloride and add to calcium chloride Sample A1’. It was interesting to see how each little formula difference to make such an entirely different thing. When someone accidentally knocked over one of the chemical tubes, it made no difference to her apron or the table at all. And when Tilly knocked over the cooked starch, it made no difference either. But if anyone had knocked over, say, the nitric acid whilst it was still hovering over the bunsen burner, there would have been consequences. All the way through, I was thinking stuff like this: ‘So that’s the neutral acid…. And then that’s the neutral protein? No, wait… so that’s the neutral acid, that’s the neutral… in fact, it’s not the neutral anything, is it? That’s just the name we give it. What I could be thinking now might well be xxxx xx xxx xxxx? Xxxx xx xxxxxx xxx! Xxxx for all I care. But let’s just stick with easy human importance…’ Because, if you think about it, it’s true. When I heard one of the scientists saying, ‘This is called the alkali.’ I was always thinking, no it’s not! Since it, if you think again, has no name whatsoever. Science is typically that difficult.
But back to more important human importance! We all went down for a packed lunch, which we had put in our lockers. (It was actually a bit like a more hard and fun version of school, for Mummy wasn’t there, and there were lockers all over the place!) Everybody ate, and then we ran upstairs, racing, of course, to LEVEL 3. Before lunch it was the digestion of the human body. But now, after lunch, we did scientific conclusions of investigation. In fact, that’s not its real name – that’s just want I invented – it goes alright; but really, inventing is one of the main things in this scientific stuff, so I’m going to stick with scientific conclusions of investigation.
Anyhow, we had to do this – whodunnit. You know that whodunnit thing? Well, we had to decide whodunnit on who had murdered one of the staff members. You see, one of the scientists had put together five random suspects. They knew it had to be one of these people because the body had a strange white powder on the clothing, and so did these suspects. We had to find out whodunnit and, in high importance, of course, what the powder was. We used the bunsen burner to discover what white powders it could be; there was sodium chloride and a load of hazardous chemicals we did not know the name of. Unfortunately, the first and second bunsen burner sample made the flames go orange, and the bits of powder on it stuck there. We had only three wires to dip into the acid, then the powder, and then to the flame. So when we reused the first, second, and third wire over and over, it permanently made the fire go orange. Great! Our table of colours went ‘Orange, orange, purple, orange, orange, orange’ so we got nearly all of the answers wrong. They were meant to be something like ‘Orange, orange, purple, green, orange, red, red’ or something along the lines of that. The scientists, who proved to be a little forgetful, forgot where they had last put their answers sheet, so they pretty much made everything up. Their answers were ‘Orange, green, purple, yellow, red, green, orange’ so we got the first, third, and last right. Apart from that, we may as well have been eliminated for the bunsen burner not working. Great, brilliant, and most of all fantastic! But soon it was the end of our great, brilliant, and most of all fantastic (-ly sarcastic) afternoon, and our wonderfully produced morning, and we all tripped downstairs and went home. Without being sarcastic, the whole day altogether was really quite interesting, amazing, intricate, and brilliantly designed!
