Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre

Wardle High School at Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre

On Saturday 27 October 14 of our female Year 10 students visited Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre.

The Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics is the astronomical research centre of the University of Manchester and operates e-MERLIN, the UK's national radio astronomy facility.

The Discovery Centre works to educate visitors about the research and the live science that is carried out by the Jodrell Bank team.

The girls, who study GCSE Triple Award Science enjoyed a girl’s night out under the stars, where numerous female physicists led a variety of astronomy based activities.
The evening aimed to give an insight into this field of Science and encourage more females to consider Physics and Astronomy as an option to study in Further and Higher Education, in addition to highlighting the wide range of careers available in this and related fields.

The evening began with the Discovery Centre Director, Dr. Teresa Anderson who introduced the evening’s events. This was followed by a fascinating presentation by Professor Philippa Browning a Researcher and Lecturer in Solar Physics who taught the students about the structure of the sun, sunspots and solar flare.

The girls then had the opportunity to engage with the hands on activities and exhibitions in the visitor centre. There, they encountered lots of valuable information that linked closely to the topics covered on their GCSE Physics course at Wardle High School. The exhibitions ranged from the origins and evolution of our solar system and the birth and death of stars to black holes and supernovae.

As part of the evening, the students enjoyed designing and decorating their own cosmic cupcakes and entered the competition for the best cosmic cupcake creation. They also had the fantastic chance to observe and handle real rocks from the moon as well as many meteorites of all shapes and sizes and talk to Dr Katherine Joy, a Lunar Scientist at the University of Manchester. Dr. Joy gave the girls an insight into her studies and explained about her expedition to the Antarctic where she lived on an ice sheet for 6 weeks searching for meteorites!

Luckily the skies were clear so the girls grabbed the chance to use the optical telescopes to see the planet Jupiter which was in clear view that night. Finally they all entered into the Pop up planetarium for an amazing show. Julia Riley, Education Manager at the Discovery Centre gave a 45 minute tour of our night skies in the planetarium, helping to locate and identify different constellations, and planets that could be seen on a clear night at this time of year.

One of the students, Breeze Sweetman said: “I really liked the part where we got to look at real meteorites and moon rock. I went to the students to find out what qualifications and degrees they had. Overall the event was great and I learnt a lot of new things about Physics and Astronomy”

Science teacher Mrs Whatmough said: “It was a fabulous evening, a unique opportunity for girls to participate in a variety of astronomy based activities presented by female physicists. It was great to see them getting stuck in and having fun. All the activities were relevant and useful as they were closely related to areas they are studying for their Physics GCSE course. In this environment, the girls were comfortable chatting to the students and staff asking questions and finding out about courses and future careers.

Another participant on the evening commented how impressed they were with their behaviour and conduct throughout the evening and that so many girls from one school were showing an interest in Physics and attending on a Saturday evening during their half term!

They were definitely a credit to themselves and to Wardle High School.”