Buscuit Project

This week we were figuring out the maths section of our biscuits. We were working on how easy it would be to mass produce our product and how many we would have to sell to start making a profit.
Everyone had another great day and were all looking foward to making the biscuits and our presentations

planning our biscuits on the 19th

On the 19th of November Brigshaw stem club planned their biscuits.
The choices were few and far between, everyone wanted something different.
Our choices were either a moulded biscuit, a shortbread biscuit or a cookie type biscuit .
Some of the choices included a cone shaped biscuit with cream and chocolate and possibly jam or fruit in the middle. In the last week of the school term we shall be presenting our biscuits to three judges as well as a presentation on market sales etc. On of the judging panel is Paul from Fox's biscuits. Good luck every one !

posted by Dan.Davis

Cooking day, 2nd trial

Today, we all started to bake our first trial of our biscuit project, everyone had a different biccy to make and some of the groups had really nice biccs. Ms Restrick (CRK) also came in and helped us when we were making the biccies, big thanks to Ms Restrick.

After we made our biscuits, we started to think about production, we tried to change our production line from "fish cakes" (oh the irony) to our biccies, some of it we had to keep like storage, cooking and detectors but some like boilers and salmon guillotine we scrapped.

Finally, we have got to try the biccies, I thought they all were good and thankfully all of them tasted better than....lard.

I hope every one's project goes according to plan!

By Alex

Fox's Biscuit Factory!

On Wednesday 18th (yesterday), most of STEM club visited Fox's Biscuit Factory in Batley, as part of our biscuit project we are doing until christmas.

During the amazing trip, we had the opportunity to learn about how biscuits were mass produced. This was really helpful to us because in our project we have to design and produce a new biscuit, so of course we needed some inspiration and guidance!

The day started off with a brief introduction on the history of Fox's, then we all got dressed up in our safety clothing (and the occasional beard snood!), ready for our tour.

We all found the tour very interesting, we followed a few production lines all the way from weighing the ingredients out in huuuuge mixers, to seeing them boxed ready to go to supermarkets. Some of us described it as 'How it's Made, only better!' We couldn't belive how great the technology was!

We got loads of ideas as to how to make our biscuits, what kind of ingredients and how our packaging should look, and the various different types of biscuits that were out there.

Thanks to Fox's Biscuits, Richard,Steve and Paul, who managed to get nearly all our questions answered, and were a lot of fun, and taught us a lot!

Also a big thankyou to Miss.Wigglesworth and Mr. White for putting up with us!

But most of all, on behalf of STEM, thank you so much Mr. Wayman for organising this trip! We know it took a lot of effort, and we were very sad that you couldnt come, but thank you so much for giving us this amazing oppertunity to go to Fox's!


By Miffy ( new-ish STEM member)

PS. Wasn't the balloon artist bus driver randomly amazing!!??

Year 10 (and an 11!) STEM Leaders take over...!

Congratualtions to the Year 10's who are undertaking a leadership role in STEM club - and should receive an extra GCSE for it! All the staff (and more) agreed that it was a fabulous session last night due in no small part to the work of our Y10 STEM leaders, and the superb effort of our new group of STEMers. Next week Evie and Beth x 2 will be helping us built some rather bigger 'beach ball coasters'! WOW!

Mr Wayman

PS A video to follow when I've worked out how to do it...!

Spaghetti Rollercoaster?!?!

We all had a great time today, because we made "SPAGHETTI ROLLERCOASTERS!!!" there was a fantastic competition between all members of STEM club, but separated into 4 teams...

Joe, Claire and me decided to give prizes to 3 Rollercoaster building groups, 1 for the best looking, 1 for the Rollercoaster who fired the cart(Malteaser) the furthest (Shown above!)and 1 for the best team work. The groups were decided by the pupils, they had to have 2 boys and 2 girls, from all different year groups.

The groups decided to use the "Tetrahedron" shape they had learnt from last week, this idea was very successful and the Rollercoaster builders were on their way to completion, the track of many Rollercoasters was 2 long pieces of spaghetti, that was based on top of a piece of paper/card. This would enable a smooth(not hard) base the malteaser would roll on, after a certain amount of minutes hard work, the builders were ready. We ended the fantastic competition and came to a result. The winner of the Longest traveled malteaser was calculated by working out the MEAN of all 3 attempts which is done by adding, after adding them, you divide by the No. of attempts, then to make it even, we divided the MEAN by the length of the Rollercoaster. The highest number would be the winner.... after working out the scores, we awarded the 3 winners with a BIG box of MALTEASERS...... ( Hmm....chocolate.....) by the way, WELL DONE EVERYONE!!!

First Session

Hey guys!

sorry i did this at the last minute, my computer didnt want me to do it!

we had a great first session back and im saying on behalf of all the year 10, 9 and the new year 8's that every one enjoyed it.
we were making a giant structure and i need to ask Mr White or Mr Wayman the correct name for it so please forgive me for calling it a giant triangular based pyramid out of smaller ones. we made a small one out of 6 garden canes, made a medium sized one out of four of them, a large one out of four of them and a gigantic one out of four of them!!
there were two groups working on this so we used a large amount of canes and rubber bands and they were generously supplied by Mr Wayman who spent over £100 on them!! i think we need to thank Mr Wayman by trying our best (like always of course!) in the next task of this project.

Thank you My Wayman, Mr White and all the Year 10's who helped!

Pyramid Photo's

Hey guys, Don't Know who's posting the blog this week but I'm just uploading the pictures I took on Thursday whilst everyone was hard at work building the pyramids.

New Year - New Activities

Wow - what a fantastic end we had to our first STEM club with a BBQ made by you for me to eat - the best idea yet! Thankyou to all of you for your commitment last year. As a result of meeting your parents and other links we will be having more visits and industry links than we've ever had before!

STEM club sessions will be starting on 8th October once the others teachers have decided on who in Year 8 can be invited to join. We have many exciting projects lined up including possible visits to a biscuit factory (Mmm!) an oil tanker engineering firm and possibly an amusement park - but not before we've attempted to make our own malteaser rollercoaster!!! We will be supported by our fabulous Y10's who this year might be gainging a BTEC in STEM leadership!

We are going to meet at lunchtime on 2nd October- to give you all the details before the first session. Tell your fellow members to check the blog.....

Mr Wayman

STEM Club Party!!

Following fantastics efforts in tricky circumstances (we hadn't realised all the materials were not there) last week this week we came up with 'The STEM Club end of year party'! Pupils were split into three teams according to their requests .

The engineering team built the barbeque's and got them going.
The 'Mains' team created the extra's for the burgers including kebabs.
The 'Drinks Dessert team' made Non-alcoholic cocktails and smoothies for dessert.

The parents and staff came and helped eat it all!

Well done to all the pupils who have attended our first year of STEM club and here's to September!

Actually it was 22nd June - Egg Day 1!!

This week we had a competition to see who could make the best egg protector. We had a box of materials including bubble wrap, cardboard and plastic bags. We were given around 20 minutes to plan and make our designs. When time was up we went out side to launched our eggs to see which ones would crack and which ones wouldn't. Before we launched our protected egg we all had a go at throwing a normal egg to see if we could throw it so it wouldn't break. Three people managed to do this while the rest of them just broke. Then it was time to launched our protected eggs. We took it in turns to throw our eggs down the hill. The one who got the furthest would be the winner. After we had throw them all we went to check on them. One of the hardest parts was getting the egg out of the many layers of plastic bags and bubble wrap. The egg that had gone the furthest unfortunately cracked so we had to go to the next furthest. The winner of the furthest was John gan. We also had a winner for the prettiest looking which was won by Olivia and Sophie. People with eggs left had the chance to get the teachers back. As the teachers stood in a line the pupils with eggs lined up waiting. The only rule was that your egg had to bounce before it hit the teachers. Unfortunately none of the teachers were hit... ...better luck next time

Congratulations......

...... to Evie, Claire and Abi who did a presentation to the school governors (the people who run the school!) last Wednesday about STEM club. They were approached at the last minute (my fault) and gave up time after school to put a powerpoint together before impressing everyone at the meeting with their presentation skills. Everyone their commented on how good the girls were and how fabulous the activities we are completing are. Not only that but they then took a number of questions from the governors about the activities. You should be very proud of how the girls performed. A huge WELL DONE!

On another note - to reiterate what was said last Thursday at STEM club, I presented to about 20 schools who have STEM clubs all about our STEM club and the activities we are doing. I also spoke to the national director of STEM clubs who was very interested in this blog and the contributions you guys are making. So please - keep up the posting and comments and make this something that we can show off, not just to our parents and friends, but schools around the country!

Sainsbury's!!!

First of all apologies it's been a bit late in coming!!!

Two weeks ago we all went Sainsbury's on our wildly exciting trip. Inside the bakery we met a man called Roy who showed us how all the expensive machines worked and told us how much they cost. We got to work on baking our sun. With industrial amounts of flour, butter, eggs and sugar. We put all of the ingredients inside an industrial mixer and left them for several minutes to mix. Then we had to wait for the mixture to come together. After we had done this we attempted to pat down the mixture so that it measured 77cm in diameter or roughly 242cm in circumference. Selected students got given a ball of the dough to make the planets. The planets were minute compared to the sun. Mercury and Pluto were almost non-existent. Jupiter was only just about the size of the palm of a hand. Then came the fun part, the customizing. We were all given a plain dough and a chocolate flavoured dough to make our own cookies. The dough tasted really nice when it was cooked. We were shown the special ovens which rotated around to make the cookies bake faster. It warmed up quickly. It took just a few seconds to go to full speed. Whilst the cookies were baking Roy went and got us some orange juice so that we could have a drink in the cafateria set aside for the workers. The Sun tasted really nice in the end. Although it did taste like shortbread! It was a great trip and it gave us all a real insight into what happens behiund the counter.


(Apologies that I don't have any photos so if anyone wants to add some from their phones or cameras then feel free to edit the post)

Bakery Trip and information

Hello all

Newsletter - For members who are currently unable to attend there is a letter avilable for you with important club information - please get one from JWE in S24. In addition, there is a trip this Thursday which you are welcome to attend - the letter has the details. Finally, if you have ordered a Hoodie (which can be used next year also) you need to collect it and pay the £8 you owe.

Bakery Trip - Just a quick reminder of a few arangements for Thursday. You all need to meet in my room at 1:20pm. We are due at the Bakery at 1:45pm, so there isn't much time to spare. You will need to bring a packed lunch (or get sandwiches at Break) so we can eat them before we get there. Leave room in your stomache for the odd cookie! Please speak to P5 teacher to gfind out what work you will miss and how you will catch up. All members are welcome to come on the trip but don't forget to wear your hoody!

If you have not returned your reply slip you cannot come!!

See you Thursday

Mr Wayman (or 'STAFF' as you now know me!)

Planets Scaling

Sorry it's a bit late!!!
Last week we worked out how big the diametre of all the planets would be if we scaled them down. We also found out how far they would be from the sun if Pluto was 250 metres from the Sun. To do this, we worked what the scale was from
7,379,000,000 km (approx) from the Sun to 250 metres from the sun. Then, we used this scale to figure out how far all the other planets would be. We did the same with the diametre using the same scale. It was quite hard but once we got used to it, it was not as hard (granted we did get a lot of help from Excel and the teachers! Well some of us did!).

It was another great STEM club.
Can't wait to go to Sainsbury's!!!

Solar System Cookies

The trip to cook the big 'sun' is organised for 14th May. We will also have a 'behind the scenes' tour of the bakery and store and some other activities. The trip will be from 1:30pm until 4pm so unfortunately we will have to miss some lessons.......! You will receive letters and permission slips at next weeks session. If you cannot attend next week please see myself or Mr White.

The Hoodies have arrived!! If you haven't collected yours already please do so asap from S21 or S24. You need to pay £8 towards the cost and we will pay the rest. If you wish to pay by cheque then make them payable to 'Brigshaw School Fund'.

Mr W

solar system biscuits - 22nd april

At stem club this week we used different ingrediants to experiment which ingrediants worked the best to make out solar system. We shaped the mixture in many different ways to see which ones cooked faster and which ones cooked differently because of the ingrediants. We made some with white chocolate chips, some with milk chocolate chips and some with both, some people also tried putting cherries and nuts in theirs for a change and just to see if if effected it. we realised that the cookie that Mr White made that was a large circle one took longer to cook then the smaller ones that other people made. We also discovered that if we had made the cookies flatter they would of been more biscuit like. Maybe we could have both cake type cookies and normal cookies. We also found out that using cherries and nuts in the cookies didnt make much difference and still tasted very good :)

Solar System Biscuits

Well done for the fantastic brainstorming on this project! We are going to begin the project tomorrow in S8 at 3:10pm. There's no need to bnring any ingredients - they'll all be provided......!

K'nex Moon Buggies!

This week at S.T.E.M. Club we were building k’nex moon buggies which if I may add has been my favourite project yet. There were prizes - a box of k’nex - for the best design, best teamwork and longest distance travelled. The winner of the longest distance was “Them”, who also won best design. The winner of best teamwork was Claire and Evie.

Some time next week we there will be three or four of us helping with the young S.T.E.M.ers when its there turn to try and take on the challenge to build the ultimate k’nex moon buggy.

The Cars V10 Final!!!

This week was the Cars V10 final, the competition became intense as the competitors fueled their cars and pulled out those last minute stops. This week the course was set in Singapore. During the early stages of the races Joe was ahead of the pack, closely followed by Mr White, Evie and Abigail. Was Joe going to get knocked out like in the last three weeks or would Mr White get another puncture. Shane probably won the prize for the most punctures with at least seven but we lost count. At lap 20 the line up was almost the same with Joe in first but Joe then suffered a mechanical failure so the top three read; first Mr White, second Evie and third John. Who would make that all important come back? As Mr White was unable to compete in what would be the next round of the competition there was fierce competition between Evie and John. Coming up towards lap 50 Mr White was out in front and Evie was clinging on to that all important second place, but suddenly Evie became low on fuel, would she manage to hold on until the end of the race or would she fall at the final hurdle. On the early features of lap 51 Evie ran out of fuel giving John that all important second place which he held onto for the remainder of the race. Final result, Mr White first with John following in second and going through to the second round, my predictions were right! I believe this was a brilliant topic, if only I hadn't kept getting mechanical failures!!! I'm sure everyone enjoyed it as much as me, did you?

Next project

GET READY!!!!

Tomorrow is the big Cars V10 final...... Will Evie be able to maintain her skills at adapting her car....... will Olivia be overtaking her..........will Alex provide something spectacular..........will Mr White get a puncture.........will Mr Chew be choosing pink and purple for his car..... Will Mr Wayman know how to turn on the computer.........????!!! The excitment at the final track is building....


NEXT PROJECT

Our next project (the week after) is a 'one-night project' completing a secret activity which Year 6 STEM-er's will be attempting at Brigshaw on Wednesday 1st April. We will be trialling their young engineers task. However, we only have 1.5hrs - they will have a whole morning!!!

We will have to do some prep beforehand..... You will need to draw a preliminary design for what you are going to build and bring it to STEM club next week - 26th March. As it has to be kept secret from Year 6 I can't attach the details here but they are available in Resources/STEM on the school network drive, and I will hand them out tomorrow. Completing the project next week should mean some of you would be able to help the Year 6 pupils STEM-ers when they come up for the day! Volunteers see Mr Wayman......!!

HOODIES

The Hoodies are being ordered on Friday. If you have not yet chosen your size etc you must do so tomorrow. We will hopefully get them for the Primary STEM day and our last session of the term.

PREDICT

Any more predictions for tomorrow? Post them below.

Hoodies!

Hello all….

I have looked into the STEM club hoodies and found a company who will print them for us a quite a reasonable price. The cost is determined by the number of colours we want on the logo i.e. the number of times the hoody goes through the machine. To have it in the three colours of Michael’s original logo would be too expensive so we have decided on the following:

AWD Hoody JH001
Darker colour to accentuate logo
White printed logo
Left chest print on front
Large print on back
Name on back

The Hoody we have chosen can be viewed at http://www.printwear.co.uk/catalogue.html Click on Hoodies/College/AWD College. We cannot vote for a colour over the blog as there are too many so make your choice and we will vote tomorrow at the session tomorrow!

The good news is we have decided to subsidise the Hoodies and they will only cost around £7 each! Good times.

F1 WEEK 2

This week was another race but this time in Brazil. Once again we had to tune up the cars to make them even better for the second race. The straights and bends where different so we also had to change our race planning and what the driver was going to do. This race was 50 laps long which was twice as long as the last race, this race was not always sunny either, there was different strengths of rain throughout the race so we had to decide when to change our tyres.

STEM Club Cancelled!

Don't panic! We've only had to cancel for this Thursday due to review day. This does mean however that we have one less week to prepare for the final race when our qualifiers for the regional final will be decided. The next race will be around the famous street circuit in Monaco. Those of you who wish to collect the race data and begin to prepare for the race, which will now be a week on Thursday, see Mr White in S24.

Next race

A date for your diaries. We have 4 weeks before we are to submit a winning team for the regional final. The plan is to do a race each week for the next 3 weeks and then have our qualifying race. The winner of this qualifying race will be the team selected to represent Brigshaw.

In preparation for this Thursday's race I am going to post some information on here so that you can, if you wish, begin to take measurements of the track to help set up your car. You will only have just over an hour to do all the set up for the race on Thursday.

So then, for our second race. Get your beachwear, apply the suncream and don your sunglasses. We're off to Brazil and the Autodromo Carlos Pace circuit at Interlagos. There will be 50 laps and you will need to check the weather carefully for the race. If you want to start preparation early pick up a copy of the track from Mr White from Monday. Please remember to prepare your cars as accurately as possible. If you rely on trial and error you will find yourself at the back of the grid!

F1 Week One

We Have Now Started A New Project

RACING CARS
'Maths In Motion'

This Week We Have Been Put Into Pairs To Work On Computerised F1 Car Racing.
Firstly We Had To Pull A Piece Of Paper Out Of A Hat With A F1 Driver Name And Team.
After That We Had To Find Our Partners And Decide On A Team Name.
Then We Were Given A Piece Of Paper With The Silver stone Track Printed Onto It With Safe Speeds And Corner Labellings. We Had To Figure Out If A Corner Was A Tight, Medium or Long Bend By Drawing Two Straight Lines With A Ruler Until They Met And Took The Angle Of Them With a Protractor And Found Out Which It Was By Checking On The Information Box In The Middle Of The Sheet. As We Had To Do With The Straights Long, Medium or Short But This Time We Measured The Straight By Measuring It With A Ruler And Found Out What it Was With The Information Box.
When We Had Finished Doing That We Went On To The Engine Tuning.
We Had To Randomise A Choice Of Four Tunings: Engine, Suspension, Aerodynamics and Gear Box. Out Of 100% Until We Found A Good Combination That Suited Us.

F1 raceing car project

For the past 2 weeks we have been working on a computerised car project. First we had to put each corner and straight in to different categories, long straight, medium straight and short straight and long bend, medium bend and steep bend from the length /angle of the straight/bend shown on the map. Then we had to set up our car by changing the engine tuning, suspension, aerodynamics and gearbox to get the best effect on different turns and straights. Finlay we had to choose which tyres we want our cars to race on and the amount of fuel we want on board at the start and if we wanted any pit stops. We could choose which sort of driver we had, from sedate to dangerous.

The race around silverstone was long (partially because Mr White had it on slow commentary until half way and because it was 25 laps long) and frustrating but in the end the winner was Jordan R (me!) 18 seconds ahead of the runner up!!!

Results of the logo vote

Many thanks for all your votes over the week (many of which I note were crammed in in the last few minutes before the poll shut!). The results are as follows.....

In joint 3rd place, with 5 votes are logos 3, 7, 8 and 16

In joint 2nd place, with 6 votes each are logos 12 and 14

And our clear winner, with 12 votes is ..............................
LOGO 5!

Thank you very much for all your brilliant designs. Every logo was voted for at least once and very well done to whoever designed the winning logo! I will update this post with the winners identity sometime soon. We will now try and find someone who can produce hoodies with the logo embroidered. If you've any thoughts about colour, names, other information to include etc please add to the comments below.

Next project

After Mr Wayman's one-off special with "Ready, Steady, Bridge" we are ready to begin our next project. The theme of the project is *drum-roll.........* Racing Cars.
All the details will be revealed at next week's STEM club. Please can we all meet in D1 (Mr Armstrong's room) where Mr White will be leading the session.

Please make sure that you write up your rocket project on the link on the right hand side of this page. Also make sure you vote for the 3 STEM club logos that you prefer. This vote finishes on Thursday at 3pm!

LOGO 1

LOGO 2 (FAR LEFT)

LOGO 3 (TOP)

LOGO 4 (BOTTOM)

LOGO 5

LOGO 6 (TOP)

LOGO 7 (LEFT)

LOGO 8 (RIGHT)

LOGO 9 (BOTTOM)

LOGO 10

LOGO 11

LOGO 12

LOGO 13

LOGO 14

LOGO 15 (LEFT)


LOGO 16 (RIGHT)

LOGO 17




LOGO 18

Thankyou for giving us your logo ideas! we will be scanning them in and posting them on the blog this weekend (hopefully!) and mr white will be setting up a poll early next week where you can all vote for the design you would like to become your STEM club logo. please remember that you cannot vote for your own entry (we will know!) thankyou! amy, sarah and sarah

3......2......1......BLAST OFF!!!!!

Today (15th Jan) we set of our gunpowder rockets off. We have been working them for about 6 weeks or so but that's just a guess.

Some of the rockets were great like "Yoshi" which was the only which released it's parachute but others like "BAM" went spiralling away and the fins broke off.

There was a launch point and two points on the field 48metres away and two on the basketball pitches 53 metres away and we took the meaurments from there. Working out the average measurment was a bit harder though. We worked out the tangent for each measurement for each measurement for angle then times it by either 48 or 53. After that we added the height (from the eyes) of the person to the answer. We did that to all of the angles then added all 4 together and divided the answer by 4. That was the average height of the rocket then.

We're going off the topic rockets now and we are moving on to something else. We don't know what yet but we know a few options.

Anyway we all had a laugh even though it was FREEZING outside, especially when have to stand and just measure rockets!!!

Rocket Launch - Arrangements

Weather permitting we will be launching our rockets on Thursday afternoon - beginning at 2:45pm. To enable this to happen you need to ask to be excused from P5 at 2:25pm. Please see JWE or RWN for a note excusing you from your lesson. Come directly to S21 to collect your clinometer and rocket. To help you do your calculations of height you will need to bring a calculator to school on Thursday. T-3 and counting.....

Finishing Rockets!

This week we carried on building our rockets and added any finishing touches that we wanted. Anybody who hadn't painted their rockets had to do so and wait for it to dry until they could do anything else. We had to put in some special wadding so that when we set the rockets off the parachute wouldn't melt (like Sir's did :D) We also filled in an evaluation of what we thought of the Stem club so far and what we thought could improve it. Hopefully, next week we will be able to set off our rockets and see which one goes the highest!