Year 12 Chemistry and Physics ATAR Students Visit UWA
On Wednesday 16 February Year 12 ATAR Physics and Chemistry students visited UWA.
The students started in School of Molecular Science where they completed a First Year Chemistry experiment in the synthesis and purification of aspirin. The final results were a bit variable but many of the student managed to produce nice clean crystals of aspirin as their final product.
After lunch on James Oval, the students went to the School of Physics, Mathematics and Computing to participate in one of two different activities.
The students that are studying Physics took part in an experiment where they observed and record the diffraction pattern produced by shining a laser beam through a very small gap and used this data to estimate the wavelength of the laser light. It was an illuminating experiment, and the students were laser focused on collecting the data.
The students not studying Physics took part in an experiment where steel ball bearings of various sizes were allowed to fall through a tube containing glycerol. The viscous drag force experienced by each sphere was determined in order to estimate the viscosity of the glycerol. The chemistry students took a while to get their bearings at the start but were soon on a roll during the data collection.
