A group of 21 students from Y7–U6 attended the Festival of Science Ancient and Modern at Cheney School in Oxford on Tuesday 7 February. Having previously applied and been chosen to run one of the stalls, the students from BGS had put together a series of posters, cartoon strips, models and presentations looking at Ancient and Modern views of Space. These included a cartoon of Lucian’s story of a voyage to the Moon (written in the 2nd century AD), a presentation on different astronomical and astrological instruments, models of the modern heliocentric view of the solar system in comparison to Ptolemy’s 2nd century AD geocentric idea, a model of Eratosthenes’ attempts to calculate the circumference of the earth and a mathematical investigation (with help from NASA) of the time Zeus threw Hephaestos from Mount Olympus.
As well as being on hand to talk to people about our display, students had the opportunity to attend talks given by Professor Robert Winston, Professor Helen King, Professor Anthony Grayling, author Ben Kane and researcher Kyle Grant on topics as diverse as Hippocratic medicine and growing plants on Mars.
The day was thoroughly enjoyed by all and a lot was learnt, with other stalls offering the opportunity (among other things) to make your own Roman medicine or extract DNA from a strawberry.