Young Engineers Challenge
On Friday 27th January, four year 7s - Abi, Hannah, Liam & Louis - went to the challenge of their lifetimes… so far anyway!
The Young Engineers’ challenge began with a presentation to explain the motive behind why we were going to do what we had to do. It was the Bloodhound Project. It is the project to build a car that can beat the land speed record of 622.407 mph and reach 1000 mph.
We had two challenges linked to this project which the four of us had to carry out simultaneously; we had to build a rocket car to go the furthest distance when pumped with air and we had to create a parachute that would carry an egg safely to the ground in the slowest time.
This was no easy feat, seeing as all we had were two bottles, some K’nex, rubber bands and a load of other junk AND, none of us had any experience in building cars or engineering parachutes! Somehow, after laborious scheming, we managed to produce what was required and it was time for the big launch…
It was parachutes first and there were a lot of splattered eggs on the floor as some of the contestants from the other 17 schools failed to succeed. Then it was our turn… The drop? Slow and steady... The landing? Gentle and non-messy… The time on the stopwatch? 2.47 seconds!! We are elated. None of the other schools had achieved such a good time! We were the WINNERS!!
Next, it was the rocket cars. After some pretty impressive attempts by some of our competitors, again it was our turn. The pumper pumped up our car and it took off! Not literally, obviously! It went straight and far but not quite far enough… we came 5th out of 18 schools - so not a bad effort!
At the end of the day, there was a prize giving. For winning the parachute challenge, we were presented with a picture of the Bloodhound, book tokens, pin badges and kits to make our own mini Bloodhound and our photograph taken with the Mayor of Eastbourne.
We were very proud of our achievements that day and hope that next year’s year 7s can be winners too!
Abi Edwards 7LSM/FR
