A wide range of projects were on display as students in Year 9 (aged 13 and 14) at Queen Elizabeth II High School in Peel put on their annual science fair.

The event gives the students the chance to put their science projects on display, based on a pre-chosen theme, with prizes also up for grabs.

The theme for this year’s science fair was ’earth’ and the teenagers put on an impressive display of projects.

All the projects were judged by Colin Bagshaw from RLC and David Abbott from Swagelok.

To begin with, the students split into small groups and chose a topic to do with earth.

This saw a large range of topics from the digestive system to the planets in the solar system.

They were given three weeks to put together their ideas.

The groups then planned their chosen projects.

Some groups chose to do research topics and others chose to do investigations and practicals.

After much deliberation the judges picked the project by Callum Howard, Edward Craker, Grace Harrison and Mirril Curtis entitled ’Space Exploration’ as the overall winner.

The head teacher’s prize was awarded to Rosie Hind, India Trimble and Katie Roberts for their ’Lightning’ project in which they created lightning.

The three girls wrote an article for the school’s website in which they said: ’We had to work together to plan, present and inform people on our chosen topic. We had to try to relate this to the wider world and how people can use our information in real life.

’This gave us an opportunity to learn about a topic of our choice and experience learning in different ways. It also helps us understand our topic more as we are teaching others not just ourselves. At the fair, we were able to walk around to the other groups’ projects to see what they have achieved and to learn what they have done.

’We have enjoyed doing this science fair as it was an opportunity to have freedom in our learning and see for ourselves how science relates to the wider world.’

The projects were part of the student’s work towards getting their Bronze CREST award.

The CREST Awards scheme is the British Science Association’s flagship programme for young people, providing science enrichment activities to inspire and engage five to 19-year-olds. It is the only nationally recognised accreditation scheme for project work in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects.