Salters Chemistry Festival at Keele

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Posted on 27 April 2012

Salters festival For two days last week, Keele campus saw an inrush of new talent and enthusiasm in the form of 11-13 year olds attending the Salters Institute Chemistry Festivals.

The first festival welcomed twelve teams of four students, along with their teachers, to a day in the Lennard Jones Building. A forensic analysis activity in the morning was followed by the manufacture of different indicators of acidity in the afternoon. The indicators were made from sources as diverse as the Indigo shrub, turmeric and moss extract gave, quite literally, a rainbow of colours! Judging these excellent competitors was a real challenge for Keele's pre-Initial Teacher Education Science Subject Knowledge Enhancement students. The 'flash bang' lecture to conclude the day was given by Dr Katherine Haxton.

Friday's Festival for pupils with Special Educational Needs brought nine teams from across Staffordshire and Cheshire to the Sustainability Hub. In keeping with the venue, they tackled chemical challenges to design the best diet of food scraps for a wormery, using natural materials to dye T-shirts for their mascot teddy bears and designing a system to separate household rubbish. Dr Jane Essex, who organised the events at Keele, said: "Many thanks to Salters Institute for sponsoring the day, all those who participated, assisted and judged and to everyone whose hospitality on the campus gave our visitors a fantastic day at Keele doing Chemistry."

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