On Friday 6th June 2017, three teams of six Year 9 pupils competed in the IET Faraday Young Engineers (STEM) challenge along with teams from Campbell College and Lagan College. Pupils were selected according to their summer examination performances in Physics, Mathematics and Technology and Design.
During this experience, we improved on our teamwork skills, generating ideas, coding skills and money management. We had to come up with design ideas to help improve the America’s Cup boats using microbit coding systems. We were given a series of instructions to work through within certain time limits. We then had to make prototypes of two of our ideas, program them with our code and then present these prototypes to the members of the other teams.
Our ideas ranged from athlete performance to wind and boat performance data collection. We listened carefully to what the other teams had to say and had open minds for any of their new ideas. It was a tough challenge but a memorable day.
Jessica McM & Amy M