Latest News
Power Day 2
Charlotte Worrall in 10T sent this report:
Firstly, we did an engineering workshop, and had to build the tallest tower out of paper straws and loom bands. We quickly found that triangles and hexagons were the strongest shapes, and three groups were within centimetres of one another! Most of my form then went to the Pringle project; while a few of us went to a more specialised engineering workshop. We made little LED torches by creating a simple circuit between two pieces of acrylic and holding them together with a sticker. We were then set the challenge of getting a ping-pong ball to hit the ceiling of the room using motors. Although the ping-pong balls went everywhere, everyone managed to complete the task, whilst having lots of fun along the way! Next, we re-joined our form, who were still doing the Pringle project. The Pringle project was to create a container to transport a Pringle through the Royal Mail postal service. We had to calculate the mass and volume of our container and test it by dropping it from a height of 1 metre three times.
I then went to the second specialised engineering workshop, where we had to work together in groups to replicate a structure out of building blocks. We were all given different tasks within the groups, there was: an architect, who could look at the original structure for 2 minutes and take notes; the project manager, who could look at the structure for two lots of 1minute but not take any notes; the builder, who could move the building blocks and the quantity supervisor, who had to work out how much of everything we needed. Our group worked really well together and only made a few mistakes. After lunch, we re-joined our forms and used block code to create animations on the table. They were really cool, we made a fox run around and sit on a chair! Next we went to the sports science workshop in the dance studio. We learnt about how professional goalkeepers know where a kick is aiming before someone kicks the ball, and that a surprising number of athletes have asthma. The person running the workshop told us that this never stops them and once on the right treatment, they usually perform better than athletes without breathing issues. Finally, the last workshop we attended was from EDF. They talked about nuclear power stations and renewable energy sources, and how they compare to fossil fuels. We considered the positives and negatives of each way to generate electricity, and discussed what happens when security measures are not met, like what happened at Chernobyl. It was an exceptionally informative and enjoyable day.