Enquiring minds at Lomond Junior School have been busy celebrating British Science Week.

Staff and pupils at the school put on an array of activities for Junior School pupils to encourage them to learn more about science and to develop their creative and thinking skills.

Science staff set up a ‘prediction station’ in the junior school, which saw a new experiment set up every morning, and invited pupils and parents to predict how the experiment would turn out.

Experiments included placing an egg in vinegar and predicting what would happen to the egg over time, and guessing what would happen when liquids with different densities and colours were poured into a long tube.

The pupils attended a special assembly, where they learned all about Charles Darwin and his incredible trip on HMS Beagle, as well as his observations which inspired his theory of evolution.

In class, pupils conducted their own weird and wonderful investigations: Junior 3 investigated dissolving and mixing, whilst Transitus 1 pupils looked into flight and aerodynamics.

Transitus 2 pupils worked towards their CREST Youth Grand Challenge, which involves designing and building water collection and dispensing devices using basic resources, as well as to create educational material on water contamination and safety for Kenyan schools, to help prevent the spread of disease.

To further fuel the Junior School pupils’ passion for the sciences, they were lucky enough to visit the Senior School science laboratories for some hands-on experiments.

These included collecting gas from dissolving metal in acid and making it ‘pop’ under a Bunsen burner, blowing soap bubbles within soap bubbles, investigating the properties of metals and sugar, and using milk, washing up liquid and food colouring to learn about surface tension.

Ailsa Lawn, head of the junior school, said: ‘In a fast-paced world full of new technologies and knowledge, it has never been more important to inspire our children to be inquisitive and develop a love of learning.

“I am pleased that our pupils have had so many opportunities to increase their knowledge, to experiment and predict, and, of course, to have fun.

“The prediction station in particular proved very popular, with many predictions showing wonderful creativity and application of early scientific knowledge, whilst others were a little more wild and wacky - there were plenty of demands for some type of explosion!”