During Curioso week our students had the amazing opportunity to explore samples the Moon brought back from the Apollo missions as well as a selection of meteorites. These were kindly lent to us as part of the Science and Technologies Facilities Council’s ‘Borrow the Moon Scheme’.

Our Year 9s spent a day in ‘Mysteries of the Moon’ workshops, where they learnt how to identify meteorites while proving very successful at working out meteorites and ‘meteorwrongs’. They made origami shooting stars with the Art department and looked at the Moon samples under the microscope whilst exploring the sample sites in Google Moon.

We had a fantastic talk from Dr Eleanor Jennings, a Geochemist and Planetary Scientist, who not only taught us all about how the Moon formed but also entertained us with lab selfies. Alyssa and Ephrata did a wonderful job of leading the Q&A afterwards, where Eleanor answered the very important questions of where in the world she had worked and why Pluto is no longer a planet.

All the students in the senior school had the opportunity to see the samples in lunch clubs and we ran workshops for students from our Prep school, who were very excited to see the Moon and meteorites. Dr Jennings also led a workshop for our students and Dulwich College students, taking them through the collection of rocks.

‘I thought that the samples were very exciting and interesting, I did not expect the school to have real samples of the moon.’

-Phillippa