Year 9 Enjoy Engineering Experience Day

Year 9 students recently had an exciting Engineering Experience Day, run for us by the Smallpeice Trust. Working in teams, students had the opportunity to explore designing and building landing craft for a potential visit to Mars. The day included three main sections - designing, testing and a presentation showing their findings. As part of this, students had to assess different conditions on different parts of Mars and decide where to most effectively place their base. Following this, they designed a landing module to successfully land their mars rover safely, modelled using a ping-pong ball and a 9V battery.
All of the teams successfully landed and worked well together to design an effective lander.

The highlight of the day was the student presentations, where they described how they had designed their lander, and tested their final designs. Students showed passion and dedication in this part, as well as mostly supporting each other within their teams. It was a very close call! They applied their creativity and problem-solving skills to bring their designs to life.

Two students designing their lander Three students at a table designing their lander

Two students at a table designing their lander Six students at a table designing their lander

students using tools to design their lander

It was not just about building a lander, but about understanding the principles included in an engineering design process. The day was filled with enthusiasm and curiosity as students eagerly explored forces acting on a landing module, and looked into ways of allowing their lander to cope with these forces on a smaller scale. All of the considerations behind cushioning, stability and drag would be useful in a real life situation in aerospace or even space engineering. Students were exposed to different agencies that they could look to work at in the future, mainly with the RAF.

A student holding their model lander Three students presenting their lander

We are confident that the experiences gained during this event will leave a lasting impression, inspiring our students to continue exploring the fascinating world of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).