by Isabella Kwiecinski, Year 12, Lady Margaret School, London. Growing up when I thought of the future I thought of holograms and flying cars. To me that was how science was going to progress in the future and in my eyes I was soon going to be taken to school in some form of spacecraft….
by Juliet Anderson, Year 12 Reigate Grammar School, Surrey. In 2016, according to FAO statistics, a staggering 815 million people (10.7% of the world’s population) suffered from chronic undernourishment; the two main forms being protein-energy malnutrition (lacking proteins and calories necessary for growth) and micronutrient deficiency (lacking vitamins/minerals). There is enough food on the planet…
by Patrick Brown, Year 12, Merchant Taylors’ School Northwood, Middlesex. Seventeen million people were diagnosed with cancer in 2018. It is a major killer, caused by the accumulation of mutations in DNA. Billions of pounds have been invested into cancer research and cancer treatments, but the complexity of cancer and its variations has meant that…
by Larissa Chan, Year 10, Cheltenham Ladies College, Gloucestershire. How can you rock climb again, after losing a leg? Jim Ewing fell fifteen metres during a climbing accident in the Cayman Islands, and he asked himself the same question. The answer to this is the agonist-antagonist myoneural interface (AMI), a method invented by researchers in…
by Aaliah Dhorat, Year 10, Batley Grammar School, West Yorkshire. “Making one person smile changes the world… maybe not the entire world, but their world.” Smiling is infectious, you can catch it like the flu; someone smiled at me today, and I started smiling too. Smiling is like a virus; it’s contagious like other viruses,…
by Tamilore Awosile, Year 13, The Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School, Hertfordshire. I was born with sickle cell anaemia, a genetically inherited blood disorder which affects approximately 4.4 million people worldwide. In the UK, it is particularly prevalent in people of African or Caribbean heritage. Sickle cell is caused by a mutation in the DNA of…
by Ashley Kabue, Year 12, Bablake School, West Midlands. Often viewed as a mundane writing utensil used primarily by young children and artists, pencils are a highly underappreciated tool. For hundreds of years, they have enabled students and scientists alike to record discoveries, quickly note their observations, and most importantly, erase their mistakes. However, they…
by Sophia Leipnitz, Year 12, Nonsuch High School for Girls, Surrey. One way in which science impacts my everyday life is the use of mirrors—which we can spend hours a day in front of. In fact, a study conducted in 2016 found that Italians spend the most time in front of a mirror per day….
by Clarissa Pereira, Year 12, The Tiffin Girls’ School, Middlesex. We all have our little morning rituals. I, for one, greet the day by performing a series of complex chemical reactions – and so do you. I am, of course, referring to the Maillard Reaction which takes place in practically every kitchen and café throughout…
by Emily Pentil, Year 11, Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School, Buckinghamshire. In 1957, one second was defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two energy levels of the caesium atom. Physics so esoteric seems unlikely to feature in an essay about the science of everyday life. But the idea of…
