The materials provide teachers with examples of different enquiry types, e.g. classifying and identifying, developing systems, and pattern seeking.  The booklet provides an overview of the enquiries and the particular approaches used. Scientists use many different ways to collect evidence, but a survey undertaken...

This booklet is part of the ‘Innovations in Practical Work’ series published by the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme (SEP). Building materials and construction methods provide an interesting context in which students can develop their understanding of basic ideas...

Produced for Future Morph, this short video shows the activities of a student studying a National Diploma in Land Based Technology at Bicton College. The student describes how the course develops skills in the maintenance and repair of machinery such as tractors, commercial vehicles and other agricultural...

This activity sheet is based on the Inventive Podcast.  It introduces a disaster risk engineer Josh Macabuag, and links his work to a physics topic. The activity sheet also supports Careers Benchmark 4: Careers in the curriculum by introducing a career and role model. There are also links to short audio clips of...

This multimedia package was developed by the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme to provide teachers with clear and consistent ways of talking about energy. Energy is a particularly difficult concept to explain. These resources aim to cut through the confusion that often surrounds the energy concept, and examines...

This booklet is part of the ‘Innovations in Practical Work’ series published by the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme (SEP). An important part of understanding energy is getting to know the different ways it can be stored and transferred. Finding ways to do this with...

This booklet is part of the ‘Innovations in Practical Work’ series published by the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme (SEP). There are a wide variety of materials that have unusual and interesting flow properties, and which find applications in industry and consumer...

This booklet is part of the ‘Innovations in Practical Work’ series published by the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme (SEP). Thermocolour film is a fascinating material that changes colour depending on the temperature. It allows a very wide range of phenomena to be...

These resources were developed by the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme and the Centre for Science Education at Sheffield Hallam University in order to demonstrate new ways that ICT can be used to enhance practical work in science. Research scientists use computer technology in both the collection and the...

From Solar Spark, this simple activity allows students to make a spectrometer using a card box and a compact disc. The compact disc acts as a diffraction grating and splits the light being observed into its constituent wavelengths. This gives the colours of the rainbow when viewing white light. This type of...

This booklet is part of the ‘Innovations in Practical Work’ series published by the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme (SEP). Energy is a universal concept across the sciences, yet it is often difficult for students to understand. Part of the problem is that current...

In this resource students explore the science of combustion in the context of fuel-burning stoves from around the world. They investigate the energy output from a variety of fuels covering calorific values, simple combustion chemistry, stove efficiency and chimney design. The unit ends with a design task requiring...

This booklet is part of the ‘Innovations in Practical Work’ series published by the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme (SEP). Visible light is the region of the electromagnetic spectrum with which we are most familiar. We are able to distinguish between different...