Year 8-Faraday Challenge Success
We are delighted to share the success of NLS students at a recent Faraday Challenge Day, an annual STEM competition, which enables young people, aged 12 to 13 years, to really experience what it's like to work as a team of engineers tackling a real-world challenge.
Faraday Challenge Days are held at schools and venues around the UK and run by the IET, one of the world’s leading professional societies for the engineering and technology community.
Each Challenge Day gives six teams of six students, the opportunity to research, design and make prototype solutions to real-world engineering problems.
On Thursday 23 January two teams of Year 8 students took part in an event, which NLS hosted, along with four other teams from Kenilworth, Campion and The Westwood Academy.
Each team was given the same brief and the opportunity to research, design and make a prototype solution to a real-world engineering problem. Their product had to contain an electrical circuit and considerations such as safety, renewable energy sources and battery longevity included.
Both NLS teams showed excellent team working skills throughout the planning and development stages, understanding the importance of different team roles and the skills they can each bring. In developing their ideas they demonstrated their resilience and problem-solving skills. To build their prototype students had to 'buy' all materials using their Faraday currency so planning and budgeting were also key.
For the final part of the challenge each team presented their ideas, explaining how their product linked to the original brief, how they made it and answered questions posed by the event organisers.
It was fantastic to see the variety of ideas and the creativity along with the students confidence in presenting.
IET then deliberated on the winning team, basing their decision on all aspects of the day, and we were delighted one of our NLS teams announced as the winner.
It was a fantastic experience for our students who were great ambassadors. Well done to all the students who took part and thank you to the students from the other teams who joined us at NLS to make it such an enjoyable day.
