Deborah Herridge peeks behind the lace curtain of Victorian society to reveal an age of darkly fascinating science...

Herridge, Deborah

English

Northumbria University Research Portal

Deborah Herridge peeks behind the lacecurtain of Victorian society to reveal anage of darkly fascinating science…fullaheadsteamWe may have spent much of the 19thcentury pushing children upchimneys and covering the modestyof piano legs, but it was also a time of hugescientific and technological advances; a timewhen science came out of the closet and intothe steam age. In fact, it was a Victorian,William Whewell, who first invented the word‘scientist’ in 1840. And while we may not beable to recreate steam locomotion in the typicalprimary classroom, there are plenty of otherVictorian investigations to be had, by Jove!The great stinkAs the populationgrew and more andmore people movedinto the cities, theVictorians discoveredthey had a bit of aproblem with theirdrains. In London, 1858,the smell of raw sewagebecame so unbearable that parliamentgave Joseph Bazalgette £3 million to builda network of sewers that still keeps thecapital (relatively) stink-free today. It wasthen too that Thomas Crapper - arguablythe most famous plumber in history -made his fortune inventing and installingflushing water closets.Keeping a clean, plentiful and unpollutedwater supply is still a problem today, so let’simagine we are Victorian engineers facedwith a river polluted by sewage. How can weget it clean?First, make your sewage...Stay with me on this one! Find a largesweet jar and half fill it with cleanwater. Next, muddy the water86with some garden compost. (Not soil as wewant to keep this as sterile as possible.) Afterthat you’ll need some things that float –Maltesers have always worked well for me.Then find some things that sink to add to yourmix, such as rice or ball bearings, and give it alla good mix. Lovely. Why do some things floatand others sink? Can the children investigate?Clean it upThe first challenge for the children is to separatethe solids from the liquids. Using sieves this isfairly straightforward, butif you want to increasethe level of difficultythen ask thechildren to removethe individual solidsand separate theminto groups.Depending on what youhave included you mightuse different grades ofsieve, magnets, picking largeobjects out by hand orscooping floating objects from the water'ssurface. You might separate bysedimentation; leaving substances like sandor gravel to sink to the bottom and thenpouring off the liquid above through a filter. You can make a filter by cutting thebottom off a two litre pop bottle, stoppingthe mouth end with cotton wool andlayering fine sand, then coarse sand andfinally gravel to about 10cm below the largeopening you have created. Pour yoursewage mix through this filter and collectthe clean water in a cup underneath.Can we drink it?No we can't! Compare your filtered waterwith the sewage mix you had before.Although the water may look cleannow, ask the children why weshouldn’t risk drinking it. What might be in thewater that we can’t see? There may bedissolved substances that our filters haven’tremoved or there could be bacteria that wouldcause us harm. It was the same for the Victorians. In 1854,there was a virulent outbreak of cholera aroundBroad Street, Soho. It was common thinking atthe time that cholera was an airborne diseasebut local Doctor, John Snow, determined that itwas carried in water. More specifically, in thisinstance, from a polluted water supply that hetraced to a pump in Broad Street.Pass it onWe can dramatically demonstrate how germscan spread from person to person by using‘Glitter Bug Gel or Potion’ (available from mosteducational suppliers); a harmless hand creamthat while undetectable on the skin glowspurple under UV light. Liberally ‘infect’ one person with the geland encourage them to shake hands with afriend, then another. Now get those friends toshake hands with someone else and so on.Invisibly they will be passing tiny amounts of thegel from hand to hand. Now scan everyone’shands with UV light. There should be signs offluorescence throughout the class, illustratingexactly how disease can spread. Remember,germs are microscopic and it only takes one tocause an infection. Reassure the children thatthey don’t actually have germs on their hands,only glowing hand lotion!LESSON 1“Liberally ‘infect’ one personwith the gel and ask them toshake hands with a friend”Victorian Science qx  6/11/09  11:36 am  Page 187SCIENCEFOLLOW IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE...The story of Snow’s detective work at the Broad Street pump is a great example of how Victorian medicinewas emerging from the quackery of former times into a more scientific age. Other great Victorians who madeenduring contributions to medical science include William Moreton and Oliver Wendell Holmes whopioneered anaesthetics; Joseph Lister who first realised that carbolic was an antiseptic, which could be usedto clean wounds; and, of course, Florence Nightingale who knew the benefits of soap and cleaned up thehospital at Scutari in the Crimea, changing the status of nursing forever. Nightingale was a great collector of statistics and one of the first people to use pie charts tocommunicate scientific information. Challenge your children to communicate their own survey information in the style of Florence Nightingale.Medical marvelsVictorian Science qx  6/11/09  11:36 am  Page 2Coffin ships and load linesAs Victoria’s empire grew, more and moregoods were shipped around the world.However, not every vessel reached itsdestination and many ships were wrecked dueto overloading and treacherous seas. So manywere lost, in fact, they were often referred to ascoffin ships.If you look at a cargo ship today you’ll seelines drawn on the hull. These are known asPlimsoll lines after the MP who pioneered theiruse. As a ship is loaded it sinks down in thewater, but the depth to which it sinks changeswith the saltiness and temperature of the waterin different parts of the world.  To demonstrate this, float a margarine tubin heavily salted water and then fill it withmarbles until it’s only just able to keep afloat.Now put the same tub in clear, unsalted water– it’s less buoyant and sinks. We can investigatethis in the classroom.Floating potatoesDice a raw potato into 1cm cubes. Arrangeseveral measuring cylinders in a row, each halffull of room temperature tap water. Do wethink the potato cube will float or sink? Drop achunk into the first cylinder and record wherethe bottom of the cube sits in the water.To your second cylinder of water addaround three teaspoons of table salt and stiruntil dissolved – what happens to the potatonow? To the next cylinder add six teaspoons ofsalt – what happens now? Continue until yourfinal cylinder contains a fully saturated saltsolution. Do you get a different result if thewater is warm, or really cold? Where in theworld would ships encounter very warm or verycold water? Would this make a difference tohow much cargo they could carry?As an extension activity, ask children tomake a hydrometer using a 6cm length ofplastic drinking straw with a blob of plasticinesealing off one end. Use a marker pen to gaugethe straw at 5mm intervals. With a bit ofpractice it will float upright in any liquid andyou can read off your scale. Try liquids atdifferent temperatures, bottled versus tapwater, milk or cola.HiddentalentsFIVE LESS FAMOUS VICTORIANSFOR CHILDREN TO INVESTIGATE...LUKE HOWARDHave you ever gazed up at the sky andimagined shapes in the clouds? It was Victorianchemist and meteorologist Luke Howard whofirst named the different types of clouds in Latin– cumulus, stratus, cirrus and so on.SIR RICHARD OWENHe was the scientist who founded the NaturalHistory Museum in South Kensington, Londonand named the dinosaurs using the Greek‘deinos’, meaning terrible, and ‘sauros’,meaning lizard. He also taught biology toQueen Victoria’s children.ALEXANDER PARKES A chemist and inventor of a brand newmaterial ‘Parkesine’ which was the very firstplastic. Unfortunately it wasn’t very successfulas it tended to burst into flames!HENRY BESSEMERInventor of the Bessemer converter who, in1856, found a way of producing high qualitysteel cheaply. His invention revolutionisedengineering and allowed for all sorts of steelimplements in the home – like knives and forks.WILLIAM FRIESE-GREENE‘The inventor of Kinematography’. A portraitphotographer who 'developed' from makingmagic lanterns to motion picture camerasusing celluloid film. There’d be no blockbustermovies without him.89SCIENCEPlant detectives2009 is the 200th anniversary of the greatVictorian naturalist Charles Darwin’s birth. Tocelebrate, Kew and the Wellcome Trust gaveevery primary school a box of treasures toencourage children to explore the world ofplants more closely. All of the fantastic printedresources are also available atgreatplanthunt.org The Victorians were great plant collectorsand classifiers of plants; they grew them, savedthe seeds, pressed them and mounted them incatalogues. They even developed a ‘language offlowers’ so they could send secret messages toeach other. Children can follow in their footsteps bygathering examples of plants from their schoolgrounds, using published keys to identify them(or creating their own) classifying them intogroups and mounting their specimens fordisplay. A really useful quick guide to playingfield plants is available from the Field StudiesCouncil at field-studies-council.org. For a longer project, present children with arange of ‘mystery Victorian seeds’ and challengethem to grow these until the resulting plant isbig enough to identify. Nasturtiums, borage,radish, cucumber, sunflower and nigella are allpretty easy to cultivate and were all known tothe Victorians. Harvest, dry and press your plants betweenabsorbent papers, weigh down with books andwhen fully dry, mount into your Victorianbotany book and label in your best copperplatehandwriting. Sit up straight at the back there!LESSON 2 LESSON 3“For a longer project, presentchildren with mystery plants”Victorian Science qx  6/11/09  2:21 pm  Page 4

Full steam ahead

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Northumbria University Research Portal