Science - Research Project - Alexander Fleming

Good afternoon year six and welcome to this week's science lesson where we are going to be starting to make your sort of end of year project. Now over the next three science lessons, this week, next week and the final week, we will be looking at different inventors and scientists who have excelled in their fields or have made groundbreaking discoveries. Now over these next three weeks there will be a new video that looks at a different inventor or scientist this week. So it is your job to create a research project about all three of these people. Now you can add more if you want, if you want to do, um, you know, one of your favourite inventors or scientists or a second or third one, you know, if you want a total of four or five or six, you can do, but you must include the three scientists or inventors that we are covering in this learning. Now it is your job to create this research project about all these three people. Now you can make a poster, you can make a PowerPoint or a prezi, you can make a video presentation, uh, you can create a website or if you would like to create a coot, you're more than welcome to do so, but you will also need information slides that go along with it. So you'll need to do not only the quiz on coot or other platform, you'll also need something that gives you information so people can grab the information as well as play your game. Now the choice is yours. Again, don't leave it to the last minute, build it up week by week. So today we are going to be looking at Alexander Fleming. Now, first of all, about treating illnesses. Now, some illnesses are caused by microorganisms as we learned earlier this year. Now, which ones of these are caused by microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi or viruses? You remember, well, chickenpox definitely is. Ear infection. What about broken leg? Caused by bacteria, fungi? Nope, definitely not. Same as a nosebleed. It's not. Tonsillitis, athlete's foot and salmonella. They are all caused. They're all illnesses caused by microorganisms. And there's different ways to treat these illnesses caused by microorganisms. Some of these medicines kill or stop the growth of bacteria, whereas other medicines just ease the symptoms until it can be released from our body. So which of these four can help treat illnesses caused by microorganisms? Well, it is indeed. Antiseptics and antibiotics. Now then, Alexander Fleming. It could be worth taking notes down, OK, as you're doing this. Alexander Fleming was a Scottish scientist who made an important breakthrough in the treatment of illnesses caused by bacteria. He was born in 1881 and he grew up in his family home in Scotland. Now, at the age of 20, he began medical school, started a medical degree at St. Mary's Hospital in Paddington in London. And Fleming's brother, Tom, was also a doctor. Great name. Now, during the First World War, Fleming served as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He worked in the battlefield hospitals on the Western Front in France all the way through the war, and he witnessed the death of many soldiers from infected wounds. Now, after the war, these experiences led him to begin investigations to find an antibacterial medicine that could treat infections. He was seeing people dying that probably shouldn't have been dying, and he wanted to change this. Now, by 1928, he'd been investigating bacteria and antibacterials for several years, and he made some really important discoveries, such as the discovery of lyson, which is an enzyme that's a chemical in the human body that fights bacteria. Unfortunately, though his name had become well-known, he had not found anything that could be used to fight bacteria on such a large scale. But this all changed in September 1928. Now, Fleming had been on holiday with his family for the whole of August. Now, he's a brilliant scientist, but he was known to be a little bit untidy, and he hadn't cleaned up his recent experiments with bacteria when he left on his holiday. So, when he arrived back, he went to his lab to sort through his old investigations, and he began to tidy up some of the petri dishes in which he had been growing bacteria. And he noticed that mold had grown in one of the petri dishes, but the colonies of bacteria around the mold had been destroyed, where the bacteria in other dishes was still alive. Now, he showed this discovery to his assistant, who also agreed that this was actually quite unusual. If you remember our bacteria growth earlier this year, you remember how consistent it was, so it was very unusual that this area did not have any growth. Now, Fleming grew the mold in another petri dish, and he found that it actually killed several types of disease-causing bacteria. Now, he originally called his discovery mold juice, but in March 1929, he officially named the substance penicillin. Fleming had discovered, completely by being nasty, the world's first antibiotic that could be used to treat illnesses that were caused by bacteria. Two other scientists, Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain, then built on Fleming's discovery to mass-produce penicillin in order to treat the wounded soldiers of the Second World War. All three of them were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work in 1945. Now, penicillin has been used to treat illnesses caused by bacteria ever since Alexander Fleming first discovered it. However, some types of bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics like penicillin. That means that antibiotics can no longer affect them. Now, your task, as mentioned at the start of the video, is to create a research project about all three people we cover in our next couple of science lessons. So, today, you'll have to start your research and start your poster or your project, however you're doing it, on Alexander Fleming. You must submit your work by Thursday, 2nd July. You must include all three scientists or inventors, depending on which one you're covering, in the next, um, that we cover in distance learning, but you can add your own as well if you want to. Add a little bit each week. Again, don't leave it to the last minute. I will be checking you up and find out how you're getting on and what you've done. Make something that stands out, okay? Make something bright or colourful or be creative with it, okay? How you do it is up to you. And again, use your own words. Please do not copy and paste from any websites. It's boring. I could do that myself. I want to see you read. So, you can now go and start your research. Of course, you can use all the information that I've provided here, um, to make it as creative as possible year six, and I look forward to seeing some of your work. Thank you very much and goodbye.