| SCIENCE TRIP YEAR 10 - JUNE 2002 |
 I believe this trip was a bit of a chore to organise for Mrs.Dr.Sutcliffe as England was playing Brazil that Friday morning and the majority of our class were supporters. Nevertheless, we left the school at 9:00 and travelled to The Crocodile Park which was situated just outside of Malaga. The ride there was rather frantic as we desperately tried to get the match on radios and mini televisions but all attempts failed and frequent disputes broke out over batteries.
We were greeted by our guide who was a very entertaining little man and very well versed in the psychology of crocodiles. He leaped into the crocodile pen and casually walked around the giant reptiles as if he were Steve Erwin - the only give away was he carried a stick. He shared very interesting facts about the crocodiles eating, mating and social routines and told us about the disappearance of his reptiles each time he put his mother in law in the pen. The girls and Daniel poked at the baby goats (which AREN’T fed to the crocodiles) and we all were allowed to hold a young crocodile for a photo (my personal reaction was . . . yuck!). Piling back into the bus we made our way to the science museum. We were seated and faced two long laboratory tables. One consisted of electrical instruments and objects and the other had dozens of beakers, bottles and tubes all filled with colourful liquids. Our guide led us through a number of experiments and examples, which I must say, were very impressive. I was told to stand on a rubber block, let my hair loose and place my hand on a huge metal object giving off electricity…yeah right! But with a little encouragement I did.  My hair slowly rose and my hand felt tingly. He then made me do painful tricks such as touch Miss Esther, our fingers blasted apart and made a loud cracking sound. I then held out my hand and lit a light saver without it even touching me. I looked rather possessed or cursed as my hair floated and I began lighting up things. Groups of us chained together and felt the current flow through our bodies, which was a very odd feeling and we managed to spark light bulbs off the tips of our noses. Lulu and Olivia were placed in a giant cage and were ordered to grab hold of a rod which was surrounded by blue sparks (Lulu wasn’t convinced it was that safe), this was to demonstrate it is safer to be in your car during a storm.
 We witnessed water that apparently had memory miraculously change colour, and Chelsea making battery juice. Our guide was playing around with indicators but he had us all fooled - even Mrs.Sutcliffe and Mr.Hogan contributed an ‘Ooooh and Aaaah’. We then walked through to the ‘hands on activity section’. This was filled with activities that seemed like little phenomenons, until our guides explained the secret knowledge behind it. We were also able to watch a short video on astronomy and it focused on the skies of Malaga, which seem dull but as we have now discovered, are quite the contrary.  To end our informative and entertaining trip we made a pit stop at McDonalds, which was good, because we were famished after all that learning. We listened to almost everything except the astronomy bit and we were all eager to be involved in the experiments. I thought it was a very ‘cool’ science trip (but don’t let the rest of the student body catch me saying that).
Joanna Ward-Vieira - Year 10
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