Sixth Formers Joe Murray and Ollie Foster attended the Gifted and Talented Conference and have written the following report...
Eleven pupils were accompanied by two teachers to Yeovil to attend a "Gifted and Talented Conference" recently. The day consisted of 5 lectures on various very interesting topics, followed by a debate in the afternoon. The day was run by a number of different people who are very well respected in their particular fields.
The day began with a lecture on "Knowing What you Know", which was delivered by Julie Arliss who is a lecturer at King's College London. This lecture explored how knowledge is not the same as belief, and the question "What things can we know beyond reasonable doubt?"
The following session was a lecture called "Success to Significance". It was presented by Jeffrey Hodges, who is a performance consultant who helps young people reach their full potential by certain ways of positive thinking and approaches to life. He has helped medal winning Olympians using his techniques, and it was interesting to hear and learn how apparently thinking, and believing in success, may actually help you to achieve it better.
After a short break, we listened to an interesting lecture on sexual ethics, which prompted an outburst from one teacher, who believed everyone to be Christian fundamentalists - he took his students and promptly left!
This led to the most interesting lecture of the afternoon, which was about space. Although confusing, the steady stream of knowledge from our lecturer, ensured we were fully concentrated on this amazing speech, which taught us such things as the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time goes, meaning you could get to the next galaxy and back in what felt like 28 years, but would have been actually 4 million years on Earth!
Photograph: Ollie Foster and Joe Murray
The first session after lunch was about the "Quanty World Of Quantum". This explored the area of "Quantum physics" which was the majority of our group's favourite lecture. It was incredibly interesting, despite the fact that it was very confusing and odd. Some of the things we learnt from it were quite simply amazing, such as the fact that if we eradicate all of the empty space in a human body, what remains would be the size of a sugar cube. Another thing was a famous theory called "Schroeder's cat", which states that a cat in a box should technically be dead and alive at the same time.
To close the day, the house had a debate about whether "the Portrayal of Sexual Activity undermines Human society". After extremely good arguments, led by Julie Arliss, we came to the decision that it did undermine society and Human values. Thus ended an extremely enjoyable, and thought-provoking day, which will surely help us understand these topics in future.
