UCD STEM workshops

Saoirse’s lucky 4th Class were selected to attend a series of STEM workshops in UCD Science labs. They had a brilliant time carrying out lots of experiments, meeting real scientists and even got to feature on RTE JR’s Let’s Dive In podcast. Two of our wonderful 4th class have written a blog to explain exactly what went on – read below to get all the details!

“You might know what UCD is, you might even go there. On the other hand, you maybe don’t know what UCD is. If you’re one of those people who doesn’t know what UCD is then I’m going to tell you about it right now. UCD stands for University College Dublin and it has all kinds of courses for all kinds of jobs. The area of UCD is very very BIG. And guess what.. my class went there on a Thursday at eleven o’clock for an hour for six weeks!

We did workshops every week and most of the time we did them in the Biology lab, and the Biology lab is in the Science building. My whole class went along with three teachers (Alan, Aimee and Saoirse). When we were there we did experiments such as making robots, tornadoes in a bottle and creating the solar system. We had a great time and learned lots at UCD.” by Eva, 4th Class.

“My class went to UCD every Thursday for six weeks to do some STEM. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. Every Thursday we would leave the school at 11:15 to get the bus, it would take 45 minutes to get there. The bus would drop us off and we would walk up to our lab. Our teachers in UCD were Lorna, Phil and sometimes other people. Phil and Lorna would set up everything we would be doing before we would get there.

We did lots of experiments in UCD and one of my favourites was the tornadoes. The tornadoes were made with two water bottles attached together on top of each other. One bottle had air and the other had water and glitter, and when I turned it upside down and shook it it turned into a tornado. I do think next year’s 4th class should go to UCD, it is fun and very good.” by Maeve, 4th Class.