On Friday 25th November we celebrated 100 years of Science in Science Fiction as part of our Centenary celebrations.

Science and science fiction are inextricably linked; good science fiction must rest on good science, and progress in science often comes from ideas in science fiction.

Our day started with some music inspired by HG Well’s War of the Worlds! During the morning our guests from St Neot’s were learning about how to life in space with Noveum Museum whilst our 1st Formers were meeting R2D2 and his band of friends in our Science Centre, although I’m not sure you can say a Dalek is a friend? In another one of our labs, the 2nd Form were learning to build rockets, guided by the team from Southampton University’s Spaceflight Society. Huge thanks to these young men and women who are a group of super talented engineers.

After a well-deserved lunch, St Neot’s learnt about the difference between magic and science from Ian Dunne and DoScience. Some thought he was Albert Einstein. I may not have corrected them on this! Both our1st Formers and St Neot’s pupils also spent time looking for exoplanets in Winchester Science Centre’s Mobile Planetarium.

Our 2nd Form, after building their rockets, had a lesson of coding for life with Winchester Science Centre. Finally, we were able to launch the rockets in the afternoon. Even with 1200 acres of space, some of the rockets landed in Dr Murtagh’s garden! Was this all planned?

At the end of the day, the winners of our Sci Fi Art Competition were announced. Well done to Abi Summers, Holly Skrine, Evelyn Clayton for coming 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively.

Science fiction is not about getting the future right, but about creating a somewhat plausible future, plausible enough to plant seeds and inspire people to invent tomorrow’s technology to solve today’s problems.

Maybe we might have helped plant some seeds…

Nick Jenkins

Head of Junior Science