International Baccalaureate (IB) students at BHS were seeing red this week — and blue and green and many other colours as they created and carried out various science experiments as part of the Group 4 Project, a compulsory aspect of the IB programme, which is the curriculum for the final two years at BHS. Students were tasked to carry out a research project based around a central theme which they were responsible for choosing. In previous years themes included fluids and nutrition and this year the students suggested, and voted for, colour. One of the key areas of focus is interdisciplinary cooperation so their groups contain a blend of biologists, chemists, physicists and environmental scientists. The assessment is focused on their personal skills with respect to motivation, teamwork, communication and self-reflection.

Some of the projects this year included:

• Looking at the effect of different coloured light to power a solar vehicle.

• Finding out if the colour pigment of a wax crayon has an impact on the length of time it will burn.

• How quickly different colour hair dyes fade in synthetic and natural hair.

One of the students in the group working with solar vehicles remarked: “Our group worked really well together when we had to think outside the box to come up with an experiment using physics and colour. After working with solar cars for two days, we really felt like mechanics! It was very rewarding to find that our results matched our hypothesis — that the speed was related to the order of the colour spectrum, with the exception of purple, which surprised us by creating the most kinetic energy. Overall, it was a successful group project.”