On 3rd of November last year Lilly-May Nennstiel, Elena Maglio, Aimee Phillips, Chloe Garlinge and Briony Sparkes all started on the STEM challenge: this meant that as a group we would have to come up with a product that would solve a problem in less developed countries; it needed to be easy, cheap and resourceful. The competition was put on by Soroptimists, this is an organisation that encourages girls to enter STEM subjects; science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
In addition to this we were also completing the silver CREST award alongside the challenge. We would meet up every Tuesday for an hour after school to work on our product.
As a group we researched problems facing less developed countries and decided to make a water filtration device by using a water bottle that had been cut near to the top, old tights, sand and a lump of charcoal. Each piece having its own role to play in the act of filtration: the bottle would be used to keep and catch water in, old tights would be used to filter out any larger lumps of dirt as well as keep the sand in the bottle, the sand was used to filter out any smaller clumps of dirt that had made it through the first set of tights and finally the charcoal was used as it acts as a carbon filter getting rid of bacteria as well as making the filtered water smell and taste nicer.
On Tuesday 15th March the group as well as Miss Hunt all went to Bournemouth University where we had to present our project to six different judges each within seven minutes. After every group had presented their project to the judges it was then announced which three groups would be going through to the final, ours being one of them.
The final was held on Thursday 17th March and once again we had to present our work to four different judges still within the seven minute time-frame. Once the judges had seen all the different products they went away to discuss their decision on who had won. After the decision had been made all groups from year 8 and 9 were taken into one of the lecture theatres at the university where everyone received a talk on STEM as well as Soroptomists.
After hearing the speech the winners were announced, we were successful in winning the year 9 category.
Owned by: THT | Last Published: 23/03/2016 14:17:32 | Next Update: NA
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