Cracking the Code at Sherborne

On Thursday 6th October, a group of Year 5 children headed off to Sherborne, the alma mater of Alan Turing, for a day of code cracking.

We started the morning at Sherborne Girls’ where we successfully extracted DNA from a kiwi fruit and discovered that 50% of our own genetic makeup is exactly the same as this fruit. Our second challenge was to crack some alphabetical binary codes so that we could communicate with aliens in outer space.

After a delicious lunch at the boys’ school, we took part in a linguistic challenge to crack an African tribal dialect and translated some simple sentences into a language spoken only by the 8,000 inhabitants of the island of Vinuatu. Our final challenge tested our mathematical skills and we decoded the location of some buried treasure.

Finally, the day was capped off by a team photo alongside the bust of Alan Turing. We left inspired, stimulated and with aspirations for a career in espionage.

Thank you to Sherborne School and Sherborne Girls’ for a day to remember.