GCSE Science Live! 2022
L5 scientists gained a superb insight into the world class research and careers of Britain’s leading scientists.
The girls had a chance to hear from scientists including Lord Robert Winston, Prof Jim Al-Khalili, Prof Alice Roberts, Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Dr Anna Ploszajski at GCSE Science Live!
Fascinating and occasionally complex topics including fertility, the James Webb Telescope, worm holes and time travel and paleo-biology were presented in an inspiring way for the audience. As an added bonus, they learned first-hand from a chief examiner how best to tackle GCSE Science questions with examples from Biology, Chemistry and Physics.
“Maggie Aderin-Pocock is an enthusiastic, hardworking Astronomer, Engineer and TV Presenter. She gave an amazing presentation on different types of telescopes and described how they work and what they are capable of. She compared Hubble’s telescope (Launched on 24th April 1990) to James Webb’s telescope, which was successfully launched on Christmas Day 2021. It was insightful to see that Webb’s telescope primarily looks at the universe in infrared, whereas Hubble studies it primarily at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths (though it has some infrared capability).
“For this reason it shows that Webb can peer father back into time due to infrared sensors being able to see through dust and gas debris from old stars. Maggie delivered this information in a gripping way and I can say we all learnt a lot from her,” Anna, L5.
“Prof Jim Al-Khalili is a theoretical physicist who talked to us about the possibilities of time travel through the use of two of Einstein’s theories. One theory was talking about using travelling to the speed of light as a way to travel to the future by speeding up time. The other theory was the theory of relativity which was using gravity to speed up time by travelling around a place with a high gravitational pull. He also talked about the possibility of time travel into the past potentially using wormholes by travelling through two black holes through another dimension. This was a really interesting talk which opened up to the possibilities of time travel in the future,” Sophie, L5.
