Miss Dawson (Biology Teacher)

At the beginning of the Spring Term, Year 6 started their new unit of work, Biomechanics, which is the science of the movement of a living body.

During this topic, students will investigate the structure of muscles, bones, tendons and ligaments, as well as understanding how these structures work together to produce movement at joints. This week, the students looked at the different properties of materials, and decided on those best suited to bone. They then explored the structure of bone, and how the honeycomb-like internal structure helps the bone to be rigid. In groups, the students modelled this using newspaper cylinders and recording the mass required before the cylinder collapsed. They then added additional smaller newspaper cylinders inside the first large cylinder to mimic the structure of bone, and observed that the smaller cylinders the higher the mass required before the cylinders collapsed.

Each group worked hard to make their experiment accurate and reliable, repeating each measurement three times and taking care to control as many other variables as possible when carrying out their experiment.