St Mary's University College hosted the 2008 Faraday Engineering Challenge Day on Tuesday 9th December. This was the first event of its kind to be held within the UK.
The Engineering Challenge Day is a part of the IET Faraday educational programme.
The schools that participated in this event were:
- St Colm's High School, Dunmurry
- St Dominic's High School, Belfast
- St Louise's Comprehensive, Belfast
- St Mary's Grammar School, Belfast
- St Paul's Junior High School, Lurgan.
The teams were given the following design brief:
"Table tennis is a growing sport and practice, as with most things, is the key to improving at the sport. The problem is you can't practice on your own. Being able to return service is often what provides the edge in terms of winning and losing.Design and make a prototype server so individuals can improve their returns."
The teams set about this challenge with enthusiasm and all of them came up with very imaginative working models that were then evaluated against the criteria as set out in the design brief.
Congratulations to St Louise's Comprehensive School who were the overall winners of the St Mary's University College's round of the UK IET Faraday Engineering Challenge for schools.
Similar events will be held at 30 schools across the UK involving 1200 students aged 12 to 13. From the 200 schools participating, three teams will be chosen to take part in the National final which will be held in London during the first UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair in March 2009.
The Engineering Challenge Days are all about getting students hooked into thinking about a career in engineering. It is also about students working together as a team and bringing together their expertise. As part of the challenge, the teams were working to a budget and addressing financial issues when solving their problem.
Jan Stapleton, The IET's Head of Education 5-19 said,
"We need to encourage more young people to study science, technology, engineering and maths subjects and consider engineering and technology as a possible career path.
This is the first time we have held a series of challenge days and we hope that these hands-on, practical events will challenge young people's perceptions, and make them realise that engineering is an exciting, rewarding career path."
The IET would like to thank Danny from T&D along with two BEd2 T&D students Gary McDevitt and Clare Bryne, for all their efforts in ensuring that the event ran smoothly.