In June, we hosted a series of Insight into Engineering workshops for children from schools across Coventry and Warwickshire.

The children all took part in practical workshop activities including using Lego to create vehicles. Afterwards our staff, along with engineers from Jaguar Land Rover explained more about the career choices they had made and the variety of opportunities that a career in STEM can lead to. Dr Emma Rushforth also presented ‘Robots for Real’ exploring the use of robots in society.

The older children then enjoyed a tour of our engineering hall and Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) showcase area, whilst the primary school pupils took the campus sculpture trail investigating the materials and techniques used to create them.

Over the summer, our Outreach team took part in the Warwick Family Day organised by our colleagues at Warwick Arts Centre. The University hosted activities across campus and this year our team but put on a series of fun activities too.

This year’s theme was the Great Outdoors, and the children had a great time making pond slime, creating paper rockets, building Lego robots and using our virtual reality apparatus.

More than 3,500 families visited campus, and our team did a fantastic job helping to keep them all entertained. Our activities received some fantastic feedback including:

“WMG was the best bit” and “we loved the cricketers and all the stuff at WMG”.

It was a great day and we’re looking forward to playing our part again next year.

Dr Antony Allen, from our Energy and Electrical Group, delivered STEM workshops for 9-11 year olds, at two Staffordshire Primary Schools in June.

Firstly, Dr Allen visited Class 3 at The Howard School, Elford, followed by Class 4 at St Mary’s School, Colton.

Each workshop began with the children constructing paper rockets launched by air pressure by blowing through a drinking straw. They quickly realised that losing air pressure and not having a well-designed rocket are key factors hindering the ability to fly. After being introduced to the concept of forces and Newton’s three laws of motion they were able to explain this in a more technical way.

Next, the children considered the differences between rocket and aeroplane wings, before making a paper dart and experimenting with wing profiles’, they also added better propulsion by catapulting the planes using rubber bands!

In the afternoon, using their new skills, they designed and constructed a 3D paper rocket launched by air from stomping on a plastic drinks bottle. Impressively, several rockets reached heights greater than the school roof! Pupils experimented by changing the launch angle to maximise either their altitude or distance. In some cases designs were modified to balance directional disturbances and make the rockets spin during flight.

The pupils reflected on their engineering experience throughout the day and were further inspired when Dr Allen talked about Helen Sharman and how her background in science and languages were key in enabling her to become the first ever British astronaut.

The pupils loved the fun hands-on workshops, and Dr Allen has already been invited back to both schools to deliver more STEM activities.

Class 5 at Richard Crosse C of E Primary School, Kings Bromley, Staffordshire won a competition run by the APC to become one of eight schools to build and race a Greenpower Formula Goblin G2 electric go-kart.

The project is funded by the ESPRC (through the APC), and each winning school is partnered with an APC-Spoke, offering guidance and support to the students. Partnered with WMG in January 2018, 32 children aged 9 to 11 made up of 19 from Year 6 and 13 from Year 5 began working on the car. To align with the Year 6 children working towards their KS2 SATS, the breakdown of the tasks is as follows:

• Spring term 2018: Year 6 to assemble the car kit
• Year 5 to run a whole-school car bodywork design competition
• Summer term 2018: Year 5 to build and decorate the car bodywork
• Year 5 and 6 to complete driver training and race-day preparation

Each week at least nine of the children work on the project, under the supervision of their class teacher, Mr Joe Davies, and/or Dr Antony Allen from WMG. Children work in two teams of three to assemble parts of the car. A third group also record a vlog.

Build sessions take place at the school on Friday afternoons. As well as building the car, during the spring term all of the Year 6 children have used Siemens SolidEdge CAD software to check component assembly and get a better feel for how the car goes together. Each week all of the pupils complete a worksheet explaining what they’ve worked on and how it went. They are encouraged to draw diagrams, label drawings, and link to screenshots from the CAD software.The children have also been creating individual portfolios as part of an AQA award in Systems, Design and Manufacturing.

The worksheets, collated over the whole project, will create an individual project portfolio for each pupil, and put together they create the team portfolio which can earn extra points on race day.

Two engineering undergraduate students Shafiul Alam and Gosia Wojtala from Warwick Racing, and Jen McGlade from the APC have also taken time to visit the children and support and inspire them.

Team effort

The whole project has a real community feel to it. Parents have created a storage shed for the car, there’s been a car bodywork design competition for the whole school, weekly vlogs and a special display area in the school. Overall, more than 100 pupils aged 3 to 11 are involved in this STEM project.

As we enter the summer term the mechanical build of the car is almost complete. Year 5 are about to start on the bodywork build and integrating design proposals from winning entries in each class.

What’s next

In June, Class 5 visited WMG and the APC showcase. They took part in a CAD workshop, learnt about life as a university student, and, at the APC, heard about 21st century challenges for the automotive industry.

In July the children will race their car against other schools, including the other competition winners, at Rockingham Speedway in Northamptonshire. – a fantastic end to their final term at primary school, leaving them with an exciting and positive view of STEM projects as they embark on their secondary school education.

The future

What then for the Formula Goblin racing car? The plan is to take it apart and begin the process over again in 2019, the current Year 5 pupils (at Richard Crosse) will become Year 6 project experts, and a whole new set of children will join them in the bodywork construction role.

You can follow the weekly progress of the children on Twitter or You Tube.

Principal Engineer Siddartha Khastgir, represented WMG at the Your Innovative Future event at Solihull College attended by around 500 school students (aged 11-18) from local schools.

Siddartha took part in a special Dragon’s Den style workshop at the event on 8 March. Various businesses went head-to-head pitching sustainable initiatives and products to groups of students. The students were the ‘Dragons’ and had up to £1 million (per team) to invest in the company that they believed delivered the pitch with the most sustainable ethos.

Siddartha pitched the concept of “The Driverless Future” and won an investment worth £7 million! Other businesses pitching included Jaguar Land Rover, Network Rail and Highways England.

Overall, students gained a greater understanding of the benefits and challenges faced by a ‘driverless future’ and how engineering is helping to overcome these challenges.

Siddartha said: “It was a unique experience and I was intrigued by the intelligent and thoughtful questions asked by the students. The dragons gave me a hard time for the £7million!”

WMG Outreach team has been running a series of 3D printing workshops at St John’s Primary School in Kenilworth, working with year six pupils to design drip trays for ice lollies. The designs are being 3D printed and will be taken back to the school for the pupils to test. Real ice lollies, and a hair dryer to create the effect of a warm summer’s day, will be used to evaluate the performance of their designs.

Diane Burton organised the workshops along with Margaret Low, Kevin Couling, Nicole Jones, Valentina Donzella, Mairi McIntyre and Engineering Undergraduates, Hok Chui, Alice Davis, Kondkher Shabaab and Jake Saunders.

The youngsters worked in groups and used 3D printed models of popular ice lolly shapes to enable them to take measurements to develop their designs. They came up with some seriously creative designs, including drip trays to fit on the lolly stick, and drip trays with handles that the lolly stick sits inside. One design even had an angled straw hole for sucking up the tasty drips.

In July, we welcomed a group of 12 and 13 year old pupils from Hartshill School in Nuneaton, as part of the Think Higher (Coventry and Warwickshire) programme.

The children took part in a Computer Aided Design (CAD) and 3D Printing workshop, with the aim being to inspire pupils in engineering. They were shown how to use a simple CAD software package and complete a task to create their own design for an ‘ear buddy’ to store a set of headphones.

The CAD and 3D printing offered the pupils the opportunity to quickly and easily get involved in designing and making, thus building their interest and confidence. The task to design the ‘ear buddy’ was a creative task but also used planning and organisation skills to consider whether the design would actually work. The pupils sketched design ideas then took measurements of the headphones enabling them to add key dimensions to the design before using the CAD software.

Before returning to school the students were given a tour of our Engineering Hall, with Dave Cooper and Zach Parkinson from our technical team, giving them an insight into the wider world of engineering.

The event was organised in collaboration with the Think Higher organisation. The workshop was run by Diane Burton along with Maretva Baricot-Mendoza and Warwick Engineering undergraduate Becky Crabbe.

We were delighted to lend our support to a team of young engineers from Howes Primary School in Coventry as they embarked on the Greenpower IET Formula Goblin Project.

Earlier in the year the children entered a competition, which involved working with engineering students from the Warwick Racingteam and our technicians, to build and then race an electric kit car.

Over the past academic year the Warwick Racing team, led by Warwick Racing Outreach Manager Mankin Lee, paid regular visits to the school to help the team of seven youngsters prepare their car, which they named The Dark Knight. The children then had a chance to race against 29 other schools from across the region in a special race day in Staffordshire.

Rebecca Bollands, Deputy Head Teacher at Howes Primary said: “On behalf of Howes I would like to express our sincere thanks for giving us the opportunity to take part in the Greenpower Car Project. It is something that we have never had the opportunity to do before and it has been absolutely fantastic.

“The children have loved doing it and it has really enhanced their understanding of science and technology, in a very motivating and purposeful way. The kit car has been the talk of the school and we have it proudly positioned in our main entrance.

It will be something that our pupils will never forget and will be one of their highlights of their time at primary school. Hopefully the children involved and others will be inspired to consider jobs in engineering in the future.”

The competition was run as a pilot scheme by the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC UK) in conjunction with all of its ‘Spoke’ universities. The APC Spokes are a national network which brings together key areas of expertise in strategic automotive technologies. WMG, University of Warwick is the APC Spoke for Electrical Energy Storage.

The role of the Advanced Propulsion Centre is to position the UK as a centre of excellence for low carbon propulsion development and production. The APC team brings together and supports those who have good ideas in the form of innovative technologies with those who can bring them to market as products.

On Wednesday 15th February, Dr Antony Allen and Dr Juliette Soulard ran a special STEM fan-propelled boat making day at Richard Crosse Primary School in Staffordshire.

Thirty pupils from year 5 and 6 began by defining the mandatory boat requirements, sketching designs and making card prototypes. A risk assessment was undertaken and then a special floatation exercise. After morning break the children assembled their circuits, making sure to give the electrons some work to do in the motor and avoid a short circuit. The morning session was completed by cutting out the boat parts from polystyrene sheets and assembling them at the hot melt glue gun station. Well done Mr Davies for managing the orderly sharing of half a dozen hot melt glue guns between 30 children!

After a well-deserved lunch it was time to fill up a couple of paddling pools and perform a trial sail. None sank, all carried their pine-cone “Captain Dojo” passenger and, after considering the fan direction and blade profiles, all boats went forward too!

Pupils wrapped up the afternoon by critiquing their designs and reflecting on learning throughout the day. Afterwards, Juliette and Antony were put under intense interrogation, with the pupils asking probing questions on their engineering careers, electric smart cars, record breaking trains and the potential for solar powered flight.

A few days later some of the pupils then, much to the delight of their friends, showed off their creations in a boat race demo at a whole school assembly.

Materials for the boats were provided by the Institute of Mechanical Engineering, and the day was deemed so successful that we have been invited to run two similar sessions at partner schools.