On the 13th February, second year PGRs Hannah Barnard, Conor Price and Jonas Riisnaes visited Ide Primary School, a local school in Exeter, to talk about what scientists and engineers do.
Conor said:
“The children have recently been learning about British engineer Isambard Brunel, and were interested to learn about what other scientists and engineers do. We spoke to the children about our research, what we do in our day to day, and what it’s like to be a scientist. To bring the conversation back to Brunel, we spoke about the important things that need to be considered when building a bridge. We then gave them marshmallows and spaghetti to design and build their own bridges to help Derek the Dinosaur get across the river.”
Hannah said:
“I think the children really enjoyed the interactive parts of the session and were very engaged with the process of designing and building – from thinking about what load a bridge might have to endure, to what materials might be strong enough to build from. Overall the activity was a huge success and very rewarding for us to run. We got to inspire the students and show them just how exciting Science and Engineering can be.”
Jonas said:
“It’s amazing how the children chose to solve a problem given some basic materials and ideas – they were all very creative and innovative and used the materials in ways we had never predicted. The variety of solutions the children came up with goes to show the importance of a wider recruitment into the STEM subjects. We all had a lot of fun and learned quite a bit about bridges, engineering and teaching.”