Amber project at school in Eindhoven (2/2)

As introduced in the previous blog post students of the Huygens Lyceum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, could do a project at their high school about Amber and her adventures. 32 (!) students were assigned to the project and could start their own adventure!

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After the first introductory lesson, 7 groups of 4-5 students were made. As a group, they had to come up with their own phenomenon to investigate. The following topics were chosen:

Bioluminescence 

Volcano eruptions

Why does fire burn?

Why is fire being extinguished when it contacts water?

Lightning Rain

Tsunami

Since coming up with an experiment is not easy, students first did research online to learn a bit more about their phenomenon.

Based on their research some input from their science teacher and the technical education assistant experimental plans were formed.

The students working on bioluminescence cut open glowsticks to look at the reactions causing it to glow.

A volcano eruption was simulated by mixing baking soda, dish soap, and vinegar inside a container with only one open end.

With two groups working on a topic related to fire, caution was advised. One group tested different fuels for the fire, while the other group checked how fire could be extinguished.

By rubbing with a cloth on a balloon students hoped to create their own lighting.

Rain was created by evaporating water and letting it cool down again.

In order to have a tsunami (on a small scale), students filled a container with a sand slope and added water. By dropping a stone at multiple distances to the 'coast', the tsunami was created.

The experiment in combination with the research online, students had enough information to start working on the explanation of their phenomenon. Since this had to be in the form of a Amber comic, one lesson was spent on how to draw a comic. Think about topics regarding the division of your story over the page, the use of colors, and the speech balloons. Time to draw and finish up the project! The flow of the panels and the placement of speech balloons is not as trivial as one might think. While some students made handwritten speech balloons, others used types ones.

Students tried out different formats for their comic and created several prototypes.

Finding the right layout and color scheme by trial and error was a lot of fun to do according to the students.

As a final result students presented their process, experiment, and the final comic with other students of the first year (who did a different project).

All students were proud of their final result, and we could not agree more! Their comics will be published over the coming weeks one by one, so everyone can enjoy them!

If you have questions/remarks about the project, feel free to leave a comment or contact us using the contact page.