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Imperial researchers visit Penwortham Primary School to deliver a workshop on magnetism to ninety Year 3 children.

On the 1^st of December 2016, Simon Wyatt, 2^nd year HexMat PhD student at Imperial, led a team of postgraduate ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ and postdocs to Penwortham Primary School to deliver a workshop on magnetism to about ninety Year 3 children (ages 6-7). [1]

[1] Simon Wyatt with postgraduate ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½; Alex Foden, Zebang Zhen, Bo Chen, Lucy Reynolds, Jim Hickey, Paul Weifeng, David Wilson and Postdocs, Dr Zhen Zhang and Dr Mitch Cuddihy.

In the usual format, this was a half day workshop, starting with Simon giving an Introduction to magnetism with interactive demos [1], followed by several activities, including making a paper clip chain using a magnet, showing field lines using iron filings and a treasure hunt to find magnetic items in the classroom [2]

[2] Imperial volunteers assisting ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ with the activities

The final session ended with interactive demos tables which allowed the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ to get up close to items they would not normally have access to in schools:

- Extracting iron from a bowl of cereal – Lucy Reynolds

- Strong and weak magnets (neodymium magnets) – Alex Foden

- Fun with iron filings – Jim Hickey

- Eddy current magic – Simon Wyatt