A huge welcome to all of our students as we begin another exciting year at Mooroolbark College. We look forward to spending many lessons together exploring and experimenting to find out how the universe works.

Our Year 7 students have already begun by transforming into detectives as they investigate the importance of safety in our Science labs and identifying hazards in CSI style crime scenes. Soon after they will be demonstrating how they can safely operate a Bunsen burner and will receive their own licence to operate the equipment.

Our Year 8s are exploring how the how human body works, more specifically how blood flows through it and its importance in the survival of organisms. This will lead students into performing their own dissection of a sheep’s heart, investigating the blood pathways.

The Year 9s now know that neurons carry messages around the human body at approximately 430 kph. The students wanted to see how fast they could send a message around the class (acting as neuron’s themselves) and after a bit of practice they proved to be very fast too! Here they are getting ready to send their message.

Last week on Thursday 11th February we celebrated the United Nations 6th International Day of Women and Girls in Science. With less than 30 per cent of researchers worldwide being women there is great importance in encouraging our girls to enter STEM-related careers. The Royal Women’s Hospital hosted a virtual ‘Meet a Scientist’ event and our Year 9 Innovate Science class were lucky to watch the broadcast. The presenters included specialist researchers in neonatology, midwifery, paediatric physiotherapy and reproductive biology. They shared their career journeys and inspired many of our students.

Our VCE Biology classes have been exploring cellular functions with the Unit 1 classes examining the chloroplasts within the Elodea plant and the Unit 3 classes delving deeper into the nucleus of cells to gain an understanding of how proteins are made. Below are some of our Biology students role playing the process of protein synthesis.

Looking forward to another busy year!

Skye Jennings
Science KLA Leader