Tea Tree Gully Primary School Science Fair

Dr HARVEY (Newland) (16:02): One of my favourite things I get to do as a local MP is to visit local schools and, in particular, see the sorts of things they are doing in the area of science and STEM more broadly. A particular highlight is the Tea Tree Gully Primary School's annual science fair. This is where students from reception all the way up to year 7 prepare either a display or do some sort of science experiment. It is an opt-in thing, so it is something they do in their own time.

I would like to especially acknowledge their science teacher, Ms O, who does a wonderful job really driving this initiative, which has been a fixture of the school's calendar for a number of years now. She also has extraordinary patience, as part of that endless slime and food colouring, which certainly makes me feel very anxious, seeing school uniforms and food colouring. Also, I think it is worth acknowledging that this is her last science fair at the primary school, as she is about to move to the Banksia Park International High School.

Also, importantly, one of the great things about this fair is that parents often spend countless hours with their children working on this project at home, for them to bring in for the fair. This year's fair was my third as guest judge. It is always thoroughly enjoyable and certainly very difficult to determine who the winners and runners-up are and also where the encouragement award should go for each year level.

There were so many great projects, but I just want to highlight a few. There was a fantastic solar system display by a reception student, where each planet was hung in its order from the sun, and they were beautifully coloured. He also did a fantastic job answering the questions I had for him about which planets were which and certain characteristics of them.

Another fantastic display was a beautiful poster from which you could learn everything you would ever need to know about bees. A fantastic experiment, from I think a reception or year 1 student, was where she had two sweet potatoes that were half submerged in separate jugs of water and had been there for about a couple of weeks. One of them was an organic sweet potato and one of them was not an organic sweet potato. I think the plan was that the one that was organic would start to sprout something and grow when the other would not.

Unfortunately, as is so often the case, science experiments do not go the way you intend and she seemed a little bit disappointed about that. What was interesting was that the organic one had black mould growing on it, and so I asked her some questions about it: 'What is the difference between organic and the non-organic ones?' She said, 'Well, they've got chemicals on the non-organic ones.' I said, 'Why do you think they might put the chemicals on there?' and she had a bit of a think about it and I said, 'Possibly to stop fungus from growing.'

Then you could see her face just suddenly lit up when she realised and then said 'Well, that's really interesting.' She had suddenly realised that even though the experiment did not go as she thought she still learned something as a result of that. I am certainly not going to jump into an argument over organic sweet potatoes versus non-organic sweet potatoes, but the point is that she was so passionate and enthusiastic about learning, even from something that did not go quite the way she had intended.

There was another group of three older students who did some fantastic models on the liver, the lungs and the brain. They were very detailed and impressive models, with a lot of detail about what those organs do. In particular, they also described what those organs do when you are asleep. Another actually quite incredible one was where they had made a home-made electrolyser.

It was powered by a battery and they used a large metal scourer to increase the surface area in the water to split the hydrogen and oxygen out of the water molecules, which they then collected as a gas and ignited, which is of course quite exciting—not only because it is one of those science experiments that literally goes 'bang' but also because they genuinely understood what they were actually doing as part of that process.

In closing, I would really like to congratulate Ms O, the teacher; Ms Scott, the principal; and all the teachers, students and parents on their part in the science fair. This is a really fantastic initiative. Teachers in our schools have a very important role when it comes to science, not only because of the many job opportunities that we are going to see, particularly in South Australia with space, the defence industry, health and medical research, cyber, all those sorts of things that we often talk about but also because of the importance science literacy will play in the future and understanding and being able to decipher complex issues. I would like to very much thank the teachers for what they do. Our world certainly is and will be a better place for it.