Over 300 Year 8 students from Ashton’s local secondary schools were recently treated to a fantastic lecture ‘The Science of Sport’, presented by Ruth Perkins of Science Made Simple.

In attendance were Fairfield High School, Copley Academy, Alder Community High School and Longdendale High School. They were greeted by Ashton AS Physics students who acted as ambassadors for the College.

Ruth began her lecture by throwing a range of balls around, including water bombs(!) and pupils were given lots of explanations of how sport depends on science. Volunteer pupils were involved throughout, taking part in activities such as such as balancing a cork on the end of your nose (clever use of two forks to help), throwing a blue dog through the air, and bouncing a tennis balls off a basketball – apparently it’s possible to send a ball off into space with that technique!

Ruth made everyone laugh by at the end by inviting fairfield teacher Miss Moss (pictured) to sit down on a chair of over 600 nails...(we knew they were sharp because she threw an apple on first). Needless to say this was the most popular part of the show!

The event was sponsored by the Ogden Trust, which encourages and promotes the teaching and learning of Physics. www.ogdentrust.com

The students were all very impressed:

‘The best bit was when she shot things at us”

“I learnt that the gum shield protects your brain”

“I found out that the centre of mass stays at the centre of an object no matter what”