My First Day of School- Emma Styles

Task 1:

Everybody says high school is a nightmare. They say that you get a load of homework, meet really grumpy and tired teachers, make more enemies than friends, and do nothing but boring textbook work all the time. No one says high school is exciting with new challenges, the chance to do cool explosive experiments, to make new friends and feel stressed then relieved with yourself that you just remembered to do your homework last night. Well I’ve just found out high school’s not that bad, in fact it’s quite good.

On my first real day of school (real day meaning with real classes) I walked into the school knowing a few people, seeing them around at camp, 3 days before. I was scared, nervous and excited for this brand new adventure.

I can’t remember what my first or second class was but my third was Science. Usually I’m not crazy about Science but I felt something special was going to happen just from walking into the classroom. Our class sat down and we began introducing ourselves to our new teacher. We told our name and what we liked about science and the second someone said the word explosions Ms Pelosi (the science teacher) jumped off her chair with excitement and flew into the storeroom before you could say explosions again. She came back out of the room carrying a beaker and filled it up with water from the tap.

She pulled out a block which read SODIUM METAL on the front of the packet. Before I continue I must say that I haven’t encountered much science in my life so I had no idea what I was about to witness. She told everyone to come up to the front but not too close. She cut a really small bit off the corner off the block and put it into the beaker. It sped around the top of the water like a jet boat causing smoke to rise out of the beaker. Eventually it died down and Ms Pelosi looked disappointed.

“It was supposed to make an explosion,” she said “but I don’t think I put enough sodium metal in the water. I’m a little hesitant to put in too much more because a previous science teacher put in a lot of Sodium Metal and it flew around the classroom, causing it to blow up the room and an ambulance was called.” All at once the whole class took a step back.

On her third attempt the jet boat began to spark and made a large bang and spat bits of hot ash out onto the desk the beaker was sitting on. We all applauded excitedly but nervous she was going to do it again but with a bigger bit of sodium metal!

I understand that this doesn’t sound very exciting but believe me it was. I have never seen a real explosion and having the opportunity of seeing one on my first day of science was really something special to me.