Students at the Mendip Studio School and Writhlington School, alongside industry

supporter, ScienceScope, have been working internationally with five schools in Singapore to develop new technologies that allow them to work with other enthusiasts across the globe, monitoring orchid growth and environmental conditions.

Year 11 student, Aaron Rabbits, explained: “We are working with students in Singapore schools to design experiments to investigate environmental conditions using data loggers that upload data by text to the internet. This means that we can share our results and ask each other to carry out particular tests to help us understand complex relationships, such as daily changes in carbon dioxide levels in different places around our schools.”

The students in the UK and Singapore are working together to collect data and communicate their findings via Skype and an online blog.

Year 9 student, Jess Buckle, described: “Communicating with our partner students is really interesting and allows us to share some of the anomalies that come up in the data to find different ideas on what might be going on.”

Students are able to develop their understanding of orchid growth in different countries and and are able to apply that knowledge to development at school. The environmental conditions are very different in Singapore and working together, students gain a broader understanding of the science involved and will soon be able to replicate these conditions to expand their orchid collection, which could eventually save rare species all over the world.