Events

A group of 35 year eight students spent last week working with Education Busines Partnership Kent and local employer Cummins Power Generation to explore how we make electricity and other forms of energy. The week started with a visit to school by James and Sudhar - two ambassadors from Cummins. They brought with them a range of models and kits for our pupils to use when exploring many ways of generating electricity. In the afternoon James and Sudhar introduced our students to the challenge for the rest of the week; to develop an innovative way to generate power for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

Our group formed nine teams with each researching the task, forming their ideas and preparing a presentation to show the rest of the group on the Wednesday afternoon.

The winning team decided to generate electricty using a variety of renewable resources and combine these with special seats for around half the spectators. These seats would be fitted with pedals connected to an alternator allowing them to contribute energy to power the Games by pedalling while enjoying the excitement of the competition playing out before them.

On Thursday the same teams were given the challenge of building a solar powered model boat to to compete in a race against the other teams. We were blessed with one of the hottest days of the summer so it was a positive pleasure to spend the day mainly ouydoors and around plenty of water. Two members of the winning team combined forces with two from the earlier Commonwealth Games task to form our finalists for the day of challenges on Friday hosted by Cummins at their assembly plant. Our team were pitched against five other East Kent schools. They presented their ideas to a team of judges and competed in some exciting challenges to make and use electricity.

Congratulations to Joe Chesters, Josh Escudier, Adrian Regnouf-Dardennes and Molly Rennie who came a close second to the well-prepared Hartsdown Academy in the presentation phase and won all the on-the-day challenges.

Josh gives his view of the week's events:
Our day at Cummins
In the past several days we were experimenting different ways to produce electricity for the Commonwealth Games. This was an enjoyable week for all involved and taught us a lot about engineering and engineers and how we use power in our daily life. Our task was to create a presentation explaining how we will make electricity for the Commonwealth Games and the best idea went to Cummins for the Grand Final and spent the day there doing activities.

The day at Cummins was a great experience for myself and my group we learnt a lot of stuff we didn't already know and enjoyed ourselves at the same time, a great way to learn. We learnt how to work as a team to solve/create different activities to produce electricity. We also saw the generators being made and tested and it didn't look like an easy job but it looked like something I would love to do. We were extremely lucky to have the privilege to go to Cummins to learn about the generators and how they were made. This was an amazing day for all of us and I recommend anyone, if you ever had the chance to go somewhere like this take the opportunity to go because it is definitely worth going.

Josh Escudier 8S