This blog's been published way after when it should've been. Lots of computer issues and all this disturbance and interference... It's still not running too smoothly right now. Oh well.

As part of the Science work, I went up north about 90 miles from here. Never been to Rotherham before. Well we, the class, left at around 9 in the morning of a school day. It took two and a half hours to get there. I can remember one weird bit of the journey. Before the halfway stop at the services, there was this little area on the motorway which stank like dog foul so badly it wouldn't go until a couple of minutes later. Evidently it was something rather than someone. We had to enter this same area before and it stank exactly the same sick as before. So badly you could almost taste it. Yuck. So it must have been really strong because the windows weren't that wide open. Oh, and there were cows grazing on the fields either side. No-one can out-fart a cow.

At the service station, we bought some snacks to keep us going. Yep, that's the sensible thing to do. Two bags of crisps will do it. And a chocolate bar!

But the actual site used to be an old factory. No wonder it looked really big and industrial from the outside. Of course, the ironwork had the word cast out on the side in huge letters: MAGNA. The permission letter described this place as being the Magna Science Adventure. So we got a move on.

Inside it was colossal! The frozen cold got to me though, but it didn't last. I got used to it after some time. We checked in and put our bags in one of the many 'cages'. It was locked shut then we could go!

There were loads of rooms and they were all given names. They were called what they had in them, which made sense.

First stop was the light room. There was a Newton wheel thing which you'd spin around and all the colours of the spectrum would blend to made white. There were mood rooms with colour-changing walls and ceilings and floors, which was literally a tent, probably designed to make you feel ultra-calm. Then there was a colour quiz. We had to listen to the question and press the colour we would see. There were colour arches, a colourblind test, animal cameras... Endless.

Up the stairs and along the walkway was the fire room. Here, we saw the process of iron recycling, or something like that. It was great. And lifelike, because there was a huge generator that came to life as the voice-over gave the instruction. It took a while to get through the whole thing, but it was well worth it! It was really interesting to see how it all worked and what the minor details were for. The figures were amazing, I never knew they could get through so much iron in one day! The second part of this room was a tornado fire - a real loose fire. Amazing how such power can be harnessed. There were heat pads where you put your hands on to feel heat and cold, you could make sparks, there were loads.

The electric room was more of a hub. Although jolts of electricity burned wires and Tesla bolts discharged, there wasn't much to see or to learn here. The crackle of electricity was a looping replay, and for some a disturbing disturbance.

And down the backstairs. It was time for lunch now, and then we could take a look around the souvenir shop. That was really cool - I got myself another piece of quartz and some fool's gold. Along with that I got a pencil and some postcards to write on.

Then I was blown. I think it was something like 23p left now. Anyway, we continued our adventure.

Back up the stairs for some air time! The air room we went, and at the front there was a massive fan that sat opposite another massive fan. They gave a nice neutral breeze, and actually sitting in the fan was a weird experience.  Then there were those funny machines that when you squeeze the horn the computer makes a sound. There were these guns that project air at a massive board with little squares on it and flip upwards when you put air on it. Ace!

Next stop was the rock room. There were two different machines to move rocks, etc. They were the hamster wheel and the chair pulley thing. Great fun. The next room was rock as well. There were loads of things to do here! There was a detonator that you could press and at the right time and rocks would come flying out of the machine. There were real JCBs we could control to pick up items off the ground. Loved it. There was a handle and a chain - another way to get stuff off the ground. There was a hydraulic lift, where you could pump air and that would send stuff up. Conveyor belts, wheelbarrows. Excellent. The same rocks that came out of the rock machine were dotted everywhere. This was one huge room.

Last but not least was the water room. On entry it smelt like the swimming pool. There were caged machines, funnels, wave makers, fountains... The fountain was wicked. You could put your hand in it and - yes it got wet - you wouldn't be able to feel the water! That really puzzled me. We got to play games with water, and even got to find our own weight in water! It was sweet.

Sometime in the day (I can't remember when exactly) we got to extract our own DNA. I've only ever seen deoxyribose-nucleic acid in books and on TV. But now I was going to see it in real life. Great!

First thing we had to do was chew our cheeks really well. We were told that we weren't looking for bloodshed. Of course not, I wouldn't go to that extent. I swilled sterile water in my mouth and extracted that. Then we got it in a plastic boiling tube and began lysis. I thought lysis meant breaking something down. Glycolysis, electrolysis... Yeah, it's a suffix. So we had to break down the protein of the DNA strands. Protease. Some of our group couldn't say protease. Silly people. 'Pro-teese', they said. 'No, it's pro-te-ase!'

Once we got that done and dealt with, the next thing was to add some isopropylene or something like that into our solution and shake. Not vigorously. We were told that isopropylene was alcohol, and DNA thrives in alcohol. We got a fat chunk of DNA into a pipette and placed it into the tiniest test tube I'd ever seen. It was topped up with alcohol as much as we could, then the bung went on the top. It left an air bubble in mine, so I said that mine came with a free game. It did!

The metal cap was then superglued onto the top on the bung and we could feed a thread through if we wanted. We'd wear it around our neck if we so wished. Someone suggested cloning now we had our DNA. I wouldn't be able to live through having two mes!

This was the surprise bit I think I said in the last blog. But, seriously, Magna is a great science place to go to. Really good. Cool. Ace.

Okay. Time for me to go.

WI, WG.