Year 6 girls from The Maynard and other local schools combined creativity and STEM with truly amazing results at the Year 6 STEM Day earlier this week!
We were thrilled to welcome guests from St Leonard’s School and St Michael’s School to take part in a structural engineering challenge with a twist, guided by Colin Peters and John Allen – both highly experienced Structural Engineers – as well as University of Exeter Senior Engineering Lecturer Dr Khurram Wadee, IStructE Western Counties Chair Rachael De’Ath, and seven university students studying engineering.
Girls were tasked with designing a new stage set ready for the most high-profile artists to entertain the masses, considering a range of stage attributes from being strong enough to support heavy equipment to being quick to put up and take down, in addition to looking aesthetically pleasing. Despite the complex task ahead, girls rose to the challenge with vigour and got stuck in to designing and then crafting a 1:20 scale model using nothing but paper tubes, nuts, bolts, dowels and tape!
Their final structures and presentations absolutely bowled over the judges, showing brilliant initiative and thought processes alike to those of professional engineers. We couldn’t be happier to hear teams coming away with rave reviews of the day and can’t wait to see where this unique introduction to the world of engineering takes them!
Very well done to all teams and thank you so much to all the incredible helpers who made the day happen!
