From March 27-29, eighth-grade students who did not attend the Spanish or French language trips took part in one of five Explore London experiences. The activities included Logicapalooza, Chasing China, England Through the Ages, Variety is the Spice of Life, and Literary London & Street Photography.
The first day of Logicapalooza was started by going to the Mellon Library and doing a breakout box, a portable escape room full of logic puzzles. After that, they tried to come up with their own breakout box, then ate lunch from the cafeteria and left for Trafalgar square to do a mathematical scavenger hunt.
Both groups worked from one monument to the other, trying to get to where the other group started. Each puzzle had something to do with math, and often times it was largely reasoning.
When they got back to school, they watched some of The Imitation Game, a movie about Alan Turing and how he broke the Enigma code.
The second day they finished The Imitation Game and then went to the Victoria and Albert museum to look at the Islamic Art exhibit and find examples of different mathematical translations in the art (rotations, tessellations, etc.) They continued to look around the V&A and tried to make their own scavenger hunt throughout different rooms.
On the final day, they went to Bletchley Park, the place where codebreakers worked during WWII. They followed an audio guide, and had the opportunity to see and hear about it after watching the movie about Alan Turing.
