Yr 9 Science & Technology Trip

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DAY TRIP by Leanna Beswick

On Friday 14^th June, 12 yr9 Ruby students took a trip to Bucks New University in Wycombe, for a Science and Technology day. There were 9 different schools from many different places, including Milton Keynes and Amersham.

The main idea was to obviously teach the students about science and technology but also to show what it can be like going to university, meeting new people, not knowing many people and making new friends.

We arrived and all went into a lecture hall where the people organising the day introduced themselves and the day ahead.

In each school, the students were put into pairs then put with a pair from a different school to make a team and then put in a bigger group to round with during the day’s activities.

Overall there were five activities, a bridge building competition, a robotics challenge, a car building activity and race, an egg dropping game and an E-fit project.

Each group did three of the five activities.

The car building competition involved designing and putting together a car out of plastic equipment and a motor to race. Their plastic equipment was similar to Knex; the motor was powered by a battery pack and could be attached to make the wheels work by using an elastic band.

Another activity was the Robotics challenge, we listened to a presentation about robots, what they were, how they work, who builds them and some examples and then we got the chance to programme our own already prepared Lego robots to complete tasks, move in certain directions, follow a certain line of colour or stay in a certain area.

One of the other competitions that was set up was a bridge building competition out of paper, masking tape, bolts and nuts and string. We first had a presentation informing us about different types of bridges, suspension etc., and some examples were shown. We had to create the strongest bridge possible over a certain distance without putting any pillars of supports in the middle of the bridge. In our group the bridge that held the most held 5.3kg.

At the end of the day awards and prizes were given, from our school w had two pairs of winners. Aimee Dampier and Jake Dennis won the egg challenge as they made the best design of parachute to lower the egg to safety from 4 stories high. Alex Elliot and Kirsty Sargent also won, but they won the E-Fit challenge, creating a person from a description.

Overall, it was an interesting experience that we enjoyed and learnt from.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DAY REPORT by Maia Kipping

On Friday 15^th June, a group of 12: 6 boys and 6 girls, from our school got the opportunity to take part in a science-technology day at Bucks University. With a good starter activity; getting the different school communicating with one another to find out information about themselves. We then were split into four groups (A, B, C and D) where we were led off to our first activity by our group leader. At our first activity we were then split again into groups of four in which you had one other person from your school and two from a different school, these were the groups we worked in for the whole day.

The first activity I got to do was the egg challenge; his was where you had to safely get your egg down three flights of stairs without it cracking. However, you had limited materials you had three/four A4 pieces of paper, as well as a length of string. My group’s first thought was a parachute, we stuck to this idea however as time went on more ideas came which made it better. Once everyone was ready, one person out of the group went up to the top of the three flights of stairs to release the egg for it to hopefully land safely onto the red sheet which lay below. Many people had very good ideas and some eggs didn’t crack. On the other hand some of the models didn’t go to plan and so their egg cracked. My group’s egg landed safely but it managed to have a slight crack on the side and so we didn’t win that challenge.

The second activity I got to do was the criminal challenge; I found this challenge excellent as you had to remember the criminals face with all their features, to then recreate them using an amazing software on the computer. This helped you realise how much detail make up the face that you don’t notice straight on. My group’s recreation was actually very accurate. The slight error that brought it down was the colour/shade of the criminal’s hair and beard.

The third challenge I got to do was vehicles.  This challenge was very technical and involved a lot of planning and preparation to make everything work in sync. You had to make a vehicle out of the given materials. The vehicle had to run on a motor, and this had to be included in the design of the vehicle. We discussed many different ideas of how to make the vehicle better as well as making it work. However, in the end we didn’t manage to make a successful final product.

We then ended back in the lecture theatre where there was then an awards ceremony before each school departed. Overall, I found the day very interesting and a good learning experience.