Engineering Essex Students Towards a Brighter Future

This autumn, several schools across Essex got up close and personal with some of today's latest technology in a series of Royal Institute Engineering master classes at ProCAT. The sessions will conclude Saturday 21st of November 2015 with a small celebratory event for the students and their parents.

The six master class sessions were held in order to demonstrate the broad diversity of engineering applications and promote the importance of STEM subjects in school. The project ultimately aimed to inspire the children, and the students could appreciate first-hand how the engineering industry can present exciting career prospects. The sessions, which were carried out every Saturday morning, included:

• A session on “Perpetulum” motion (aiming to build a perpetual pendulum), with Plextek.
• Two sessions with mentors from Selex, learning about Propeller Theory and Safe Deployment of their HALO system.  
• A session with a Transport for London engineer, and an engineer from Eng. Tech Now, who facilitated an electronics session on control mechanisms, using the concept of a Cistern and replacing water with oil.  
• A planned session with a representative from American Airlines, helping students to construct a model RR jet engine.  
• The final session (taking place on the 21st) with ambassadors from Visteon/Hanon Systems organizing a Scaletrix activity.

Raytheon also got involved by hosting a thrilling quadcopter challenge at the end of the series. Students had the unique opportunity to design and build their own quadcopter, and put them to the test against the other schools’ creations in a series of skill-based tasks, with congratulations to Stewards Academy for winning the overall competition.