Science Discovery
As your child or dependent's school has signed up to take part in the Open Space: Science Discovery project with the University of Leicester, they have been provided with four science experiments to take home and complete with you and their family.
The science experiments focus on part of the science curriculum your child or dependent will be covering at school. The experiments illustrate various scientific concepts, helping to bring science to life. We hope this helps to inspire your young person to consider science as a future career option and motivates them in their studies. The project has been kindly funded by the UK Space Agency and The Ogden Trust.
How can you support your young person?
We want you, your child/dependent and the family to get fully involved in the project, to have fun and to discover science. To get you started, we’ve collated some recommendations for you:
- Read through all the resources provided by the school.
- Dig deeper into the subject if you or your child/dependent has more questions. To help with this we have included some links to additional resources on this webpage.
Find out more information
We hope that your child or dependent will enjoy taking part in the science experiments and come away with a thirst to find out more. To help you guide your young person’s learning, and to answer some of the questions they may have, we have put together a list of additional resources below that you can access free of charge.
Additional Resources
Life in Space
Continue learning about the different life forms that might exist in space.
SpaceCareers
For students: discover more about a career as an astrobiologist and other space careers.
Coursera
For adults: take free online courses with Coursera. Try searching ‘Astrobiology and the search for extra-terrestrial life’ or ‘Astrobiology: Exploring other worlds’
Force and Rockets
We’ve found additional experiments for you to do at home to see how good of a rocket you can make. There is also more information about how you can become a rocket scientist.
ScienceLearn
For students: lots of great resources including interviews with rocket scientists and engineers, more home experiments and simulations.
Make your own rocket
For students: try creating a larger rocket at home.
Make your own stomp rocket
For students: try creating a stomp rocket.
Kerbal Space Program
For adults: take charge of the space programme for an alien society in this online rocket mission.
Growing Food in Space
Did you enjoy learning about how we can grow food in space? We’ve got some more challenges for you below, as well as other webpages to find out more information.
Train like an astronaut
For students: take a look at Tim Peake’s physical and scientific challenges
Food on the International Space Station
For students: design food for the ISS.
Farming in space
For students: explore how farming works in space.
Growing plants in space
For adults: check out the research that NASA is taking part in to understand how we can grow plants in space.
Study with us
Remember it’s never too late to change career or study at University. Why not have a look at the courses we offer?
Check out the courses we have an offer
We have strong research-intensive roots at the University of Leicester, where we explore the unknown and the unanswered.