Science lessons worth having

The Daily Mail reports that a group of UK science students has just completed a novel series of experiments designed "to show that the subject can be fun and interesting". The lessons were filmed for broadcast on British television.

It certainly sounds like fun! Activities included:

• Running for cover from a shower of man-made meteors;
• Dissecting a horse to learn about anatomy;
• Making glue in the classroom, following which the students who made the best glues were allowed to stick themselves to a board. They were then hoisted 60 feet into the air to see who would "stick" the longest;
• Calculating how many helium-filled balloons would be required to allow each student to drop safely from a 40-foot-high platform to the ground. The most accurate students got to try this out in real life, as shown below.

I wish I'd been able to fool around like this when I did physics and chemistry at high school. I might have enjoyed the subjects a lot more.

(On the other hand, some of my classmates - as I remember them - would have been crouched in ambush with catapults and blowguns, just waiting for me to clear the platform before popping my balloons!)

Peter