Here, John Ireland gives a report on a Year 10 engineering trip to the Catalyst Museum.

In the afternoon we all travelled to the catalyst museum to see how the technology has changed during the 19^th, 20^th and 21^st century. The first thing we did was make our very own shower gel. 

First we had to put on the lab coat and watch a PowerPoint display which the teachers had provided us with. We were learning about how dirty something actually is and it was rather shocking. Even when we have a wash we still have a lot of bacteria on/in us. After the PowerPoint they then show us how to make the shower gel. We got into ours pair and put on our gloves, then we started to make the shower gel. 

Equipment:

• Lab Coat
• Safety Glasses
• Gloves
• 150ml of water
• Salt
• Substance C,B and D
• Beakers
• Dye
• Spoon
• Sensors (industrial)
• Syringe
• Containers

Instructions

1. Put your safety equipment such as the glasses and gloves for health and safety reasons
2. Next measure out 150ml of water into a measuring beaker and then stir in a glass container
3. Whilst we stirred the water we then added the substance B and stirred so there wasn’t any bubbles
4. Then we added Substance C and stirred well but slowly and then added D which was the conditioner
5. We stirred slowly but well and then added the salt, this thickens the shower gel
6. Then once we had it all mixed together we then got to choose a colour and a smell. (We chose a lime green colour and then we chose a masculine smell)
7. Then we got the syringe and took the shower gel out of the beaker into our little plastic containers which in the end we got 2 each.

After making the shower gel we had a look around the museum. There were loads of different parts of the museum, such as the scientific part, a historic part and then the observatory. In my opinion the observatory was better than the other two because whilst we were making little bridges and using the camera we could look out and see were the river Mersey finishes and were we had came from which was really cool. After the museum we went into the play ground which was just outside just for a bit of fun before we had to go home.

In my opinion I think that the trip was really fun and a good “educational” trip. I have learnt how the technology has changed during the centuries.  We also learnt were the Mersey ends and were we were on the Mersey when we were in the observatory.