Weather capsule delivered via space rockets!!
March 11th 2009
This year's competition was on Tuesday 10th March in the John Charles Sports Centre, South Leeds. Some 40 teams took part which involved 18 schools and 2 colleges. The winning teams were:
Basic : Garforth School Intermediate : West Leeds School Advanced : Guiseley School
Each of these received a trophy to keep and a winners certificate for the team members.
We also provided an "Innovation Trophy" for the team that comes up with the most creative, innovative idea.
Farnley Park Intermediate team were the proud winners.
The event was also used as part of CPD in Enterprise for teachers for the first time.
The task was to launch a weather capsule -
Here are a few of the photographs (for further pictures and the full report posted on the Rotary District 1040 website) - click here.
The Basic Task involved making
• a launcher, complete with
• a trigger mechanism
• that could be fired remotely after a 10 second countdown
- so that a space capsule containing weather instruments reached over 3m and landed as close to the launch site as possible.
The Intermediate Task required the capsule to land softly: most entrants made a parachute that opened above 3m.
With the Advanced Task, the capsule was despatched in a carrier vehicle that had to separate at over 3m and land softly, again by parachute.
News events leading up to Competition Day:
January 12th 2009: City councillors show their support. Allocations are being made from the budgets of a number of city councillors in support of community projects in their area.
January 7th 2009: JBC Industrial Services joined us as a sponsor.
December 17th 2008: The Department of Mechanical Engineering of Leeds University have joined our growing list of sponsors. The head of Department Prof David Barton states that they are very happy to support such a worthwhile event that is impotant in developing awareness and skills needed in everyday life.
December 15th 2008: A new initiative has been agreed - all teachers involved in the Technology Challenge event are now able to undertake Continuing Professional Development, overseen by the Education Leeds Education Business Partnership. This will look at how enterprise fits into the technology curriculum. This is a Governmental requirement for all teaching staff. As part of this event, it is hoped to encourage the use of the services of one or more teachers to produce, at a later date, an in-school resource for all schools. This would then be used to enable a wider group of young people to experience a similar challenge in the future.
We are pleased that this event has been selected for CPD using such an intergrated approach. This is the first time that such an arrangement has been undertaken with a Rotary Technology event and we regard it as a compliment that we have been selected and the confidence that Education Leeds has placed in the running of the event over the past two years which they have supported.
