MORE than 200 students from schools across Bromsgrove, Redditch and Birmingham took place in a Space Day last Thursday and got to see a real rocket.
Among them were South Bromsgrove High School, which provided the base for the event, along with Arrow Vale RSA Academy, Aston Fields Middle, Bromsgrove School, Ipsley Middle and King Edward Camp Hill Girls.
These schools form The Ogden Trust West Midlands Secondary Partnership. The Ogden Trust supports schools, teachers, projects and programmes that are committed to enhancing physics teaching and learning: Making Physics Matter.
The day was excellent with the 9.7m tall rocket causing quite a stir and buzz in the school as staff and students saw it on the way into school, parked up in the headteacher’s parking space.
Students had the opportunity to see it close up and learn about and handle things that had gone into space, such as the rocket and examples of space food, (mission patches from NASA), and items from space, such as meteorites.
They also had a wizz-bang presentation on the history of rockets, all the way from the first development by the Chinese, hundreds of years ago, to the modern rockets of today, with live demonstrations of rocket fuel – soild and liquid – in action.
Steve Clark, partnership coordinator and head of physics at South, said: “We are very grateful to The Ogden trust providing the funding to inspire the next generation of space scientists, engineers and astronauts. It was a good time with plenty of awe and wonder.”
