STEM Day

Saturday 14^th October saw STEM Saturday hit Badminton school with over 90 pupils in Year 9 to Upper Sixth descending the School to engage in a variety of STEM based activities. The girls arrived full of enthusiasm and excitement and I was delighted to see they maintained this level of excitement throughout the day. As our guest speakers and activities prepared, the girls gathered in the dining hall to be allocated sessions and learn more about the day.

Engineering Challenge

The Engineering Challenge, run by Mr Hutchings and Mrs Noonan, brought a competitive (and slightly soggy) element to STEM day. The task? To build a boat small enough to fit into a washing-up bowl using materials scavenged from around the site! However, it didn’t end there – the boat must be buoyant enough to hold more steel masses than the other teams. We saw take-away tubs, empty plastic bottles, pine cones, pencils, gaffer tape, cardboard coffee cups and much more being used to very imaginative use in order to exploit Archimedes’ Principle that the upward buoyant force that is exerted on a body immersed in a fluid is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces and acts in the upward direction. The first group set the bar fairly high, with a maximum load of 600g, but the second group went even further, with many groups achieving +2000g! The winning design eventually went to Natalie, Aaliyah and Pecky, who confidently carried 2500g in their simple but effective design. We won’t mention the slightly unfair advantage of being A-Level Physics students.

University talks

Dr Harry Coules, a PhD in Welding Engineering at Cranfield University, gave us a brief insight into studying Engineering Science at University. He passionately talked to us about his speciality in fracture mechanics and his journey of creating nuclear reactor components for power stations. Dr Katie Hore is a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of Oxford and currently works as an application engineer. She shared with us information about how her academic journey has led to her current role; a position where she uses the process of photolithography and plasma to produce components for modern electronics industries. Both speakers gave inspiring presentations that were especially helpful to students who would like to pursue higher education in the Chemistry field.

Dyson360eye

This was an informative and enjoyable activity, where we were shown the Dyson360eye (which is a robot vacuum-cleaner), and explored how to programme the robot and how it worked. We were also helped by two girls who studied robotics at university, which gave us an insight into the subject and they were also able to answer any questions we had. The Dyson360eye is a very clever machine, which had a sensor to prevent it from falling down stairs and off tables and it was able to find its way to its battery source. It had sensors to scan rooms, so that the cleaning would be more efficient and so to stop it from crashing into furniture. I think a Dyson360eye would be a worthwhile purchase, because not only does it remove all the dust and dirt from your home, it is a  really special and different addition to your home. Overall the Stem day was really interesting and I would love to do it next time.

Airbus

We were privileged to welcome three engineers from Airbus who were all on the graduate scheme there to talk about aerospace engineering and the day in the life of an engineer. As well as finding out lots about how planes fly, we also learnt how many safety features engineers put into a plane, with every system having at least one if not two backups, and they only half implied that their designs made the job of the pilot fairly pointless! We also learnt lots about the day in a life of an engineer. 

University Tutorials

Alex Massey from Cambridge University came in and gave some of the Upper Sixth Chemists a taste of university style work by holding a “supervision”, which is the small-group teaching sessions central to learning at Oxbridge and other universities. The girls were extended well beyond the A Level syllabus and came up with some excellent and searching questions. 

The Odyssey Dome 

The Odyssey Dome was so large that it filled up an entire half of the Peace Memorial Hall. We entered through a small slit on the side and lay on comfortable mats. Looking up at the beautiful projection of the starry night sky, we learned about constellations and the Milky Way. We adventured around the galaxy and visited the largest known star, VY Cannis Majoris, which would take a plane flying at 1400km\hr, 1100 years to circle it! We watched a video about the beginning of the universe and leaned about the beauty of evolution, life cycles of stars and how we were all made of stardust. Being in the dome felt like we among the stars, almost colliding with planets and the experience was so amazing that we tried to go back to the hall to do it again!