Working towards a Gold CREST Award

Two busy days of hard work at Birmingham University Mechanical Engineering department between 13^th and 14^th December took two Year 12 teams much closer to completing their Engineering Education Scheme projects and their Christmas shopping.

Eight year 12 Physics students (Caitln Fletcher, Kate Craddock, Raudhah Syed, Jasmine Simms, Jamine Needham, Grace Carling, Kiren Dulay and Isabella Bickerstaff) left School for Birmingham University at 8am and after a very tedious 2 two hour drive on a very slow M6 we finally arrived.  The teams soon set to work in the workshops with their mentors building and testing their models.

Both teams are working with mentors form local engineering firm GE Power. One team is building a model wind tunnel (effectively) to measure how air flow changes speed depending how close or far it is from a turbine blade. The other team is writing a computer program to help monitor wind turbine performance to help the company monitor maximum power output. 

It wasn’t all hard work as we were treated to Christmas dinner at the University on the first evening and there was time to do the last minute Christmas shopping in Birmingham City Centre at the German Christmas Market. A particularly successful trip for Mrs Mighall as she managed to return to the minibus without getting a parking ticket this year

The projects are both progressing well, and now the teams will continue to test and evaluate their models back at school before writing up their full reports and preparing presentations ready to show the assessors at the end of project event at the end of April. The girls are not only getting a Gold CREST award for their projects but will gain valuable scientific and engineering experience which will be beneficial in helping them in applying for jobs, apprenticeships and University courses. There is still lots of work to do, but Dr Fletcher and Mrs Mighall are very pleased with the progress so far. Updates will follow.