ChemBAM brings chemistry to life for school children
Pupils taking part in the University’s award-winning chemistry outreach project have been getting to grips with real-life chemistry during a campus visit.
Around 45 children from Moorgate Primary Academy visited the School of Chemistry to find out how to make electricity from potatoes; the best ways to recycle waste plastic; and how DNA provides instructions for life.
The visit was organised by ChemBAM, a project which aims to brings chemistry to life for schoolchildren, showing its relevance to real-world activities and challenges. The pupils took part in a series of hands-on activities organised by undergraduate and postgraduate students from the University’s School of Chemistry, and afterwards presented what they had learned.
The children did an absolutely fantastic job in explaining the science that we do in the School of Chemistry. They were great ambassadors for the University!
Supported by the Royal Society of Chemistry and philanthropic gifts from a US alumnus, ChemBAM has reached thousands of children from preschool through A-level with outreach activities, online resources, and toolkits since 2017.
Project lead, Zoe Schnepp, said: ‘We set up ChemBAM to respond to research showing that people generally don’t feel positively about chemistry teaching in schools, and don’t always understand the importance of chemistry in our everyday lives.’
Following the Moorgate Primary Academy visit to campus, MP Sarah Edwards visited the school to chat to pupils and staff and learn more about ChemBAM.
Dr Schnepp added: ‘The children did an absolutely fantastic job in explaining the science that we do in the School of Chemistry. They were great ambassadors for the University and were able to explain about making recyclable plastics, how we recycle batteries and also how we can modify DNA with fluorescent tags to help us detect genetic disorders!’