STEM-oothies

One of the last topics of last year was to create a smoothie. We had to collect data, make the packaging, and even made the smoothies. After all of this was complete the day of judgement came when the teachers tried the smoothies and voted which one was the best. Then when all the votes were tallied it was reviled that Jordan had the best packaging and Megan won for best taste (Sorry if I got anyone mixed up). And the best part is there where no MAJOR casualties.

Nissan 2010

In winter 2010, STEM club visited the Nissan factory in Sunderland where members were given a tour around the massive factory. We saw the whole production line from creating the case of the car, to securing the wheels, to testing it's reliability. This experience showed us how fast such a complex machine can be produced and also how much effort and teamwork it takes to meet the deadline. After our tour of the factory, we were given a presentation by some of Nissan's engineers. Later in the day we went to the national glass museum and made our own baubles which will act as souvenirs of this inspirational trip.

Murderous Maths

On Tuesday, 24th of May, STEM hosted an event for the primary year 6 pupils to attend Brigshaw and participate in a fun packed murderous challenge. It was a challenge at first to set up the chairs and equipment! But nevertheless, we had a fun time with the year 6's. Firstly, we had the Brigshaw Murder; who would have guessed Mr Kibble murdered Mr Black, with a revolver? There was one group which finished and got every single detail right; although everyone else had an excellent attempt too. However, the best part, in my opinion, was when Kjarten Poskitt did his presentation. Not only, was this interesting, but it was extremely exhilerating: in essence, everyone gave the thumbs up.

Thank you to Kjarten Poskitt, the Teachers, the Brigshaw Pupils AND the year 6s for making this one of the best events at Brigshaw.

~Alex

The Last STEM Session

Sorry I didn't post this earlier...I was in London!
Anyway, for our last STEM Club session we made robots!!! We also had a BBQ, thanks to Mr White's insane cooking skills (ermmm).
For the robot, we soldered the wires to the motors and then to a control panel which also had the battery on. It was quite difficult to do as we had to separate the wires from each other and strip the coating off of them.
The BBQ was great, everyone had a good time. Thank you Mr White.
Also thank you Mr Chew and Mr Wayman for everything you've done this year...see you next year!!!
:)

ready.. steady...TOWER!

This week in STEM club we got into groups of 2 or 3 and were given the tasking of making a tower. So, suppose it sounds easy doesn't it...? Well... this is STEM club so think again!! Making a tower sounds pretty easy... but when you're given paper, card, masking tape, sellotape, plastic straws, paper art straws and five pounds it becomes harder! Before we could do any building we had to think about the structure design of our towers and once we'd decided on that, we were thinking materials and budgets! This was difficult as somethings were more expensive than others and some also worked better than others. Once everyone had purchased all their materials we began the process of building! (: Working had we all found out what worked and unfortunately what didn't. Some people thought small, some thought big, and some thought really big! Everyone was successful, some more than others. When judgement time came it was obvious who had won, Jordan's team! Their structure was above the height of the roof so we had to judge it on the stairs,where it could actually stand! So a congratulations is in order for Jordan and his team! Well done guys! I think everyone had a good time and we all enjoyed ourselves! (: x

THE FINAL DAY - HOW EGGCITING

The tension in the room is building up, as Mr Chew calls the last fifteen minutes, people rush round like its the end of the world, rushing, panicing because its almost time to finish.

People now starting to get eggcited as the time is almost there, some still panicing as they need to add the last few adjustments.

Miffy is now drawing for effect to score points for her group...
Laura is drawing with a marker on her egg to make it look fabulous and score more points for hers, miffys, graces and megans group (we'll have to see what happens, There is NO marks for looks !!!)...

Frankie is putting her building together, her target is to be finished in five minutes...

By Sammie Marriott

Finishing our Egg Mechanisms!

Today (Wednesday 4th March), was a chance to finish off the mechanisms that will move our eggs 1.75 metres across two tables.

Some groups had lots to do(OUR GROUP!), whilst others had done and were giving there buildings several test-runs and tweaking whatever needed to be tweaked.

Next week will be the week that we film our official challenge, so a lot of us are feeling the tension and as I look around me I see few happy relaxed faces compared to the many concentrated faces!

Keep reading, next week we will hopefully have some videos on of the results..!

By Miffy

Maths Teacher Conferance

HI,
Today (tuesday), Evie, Claire, Joe and I went to a meeting in Leeds to present to a group of Maths teachers from across Leeds about STEM activities and how they can be adapted into a classroom style project. They all seemed interested in what we had to say and questions and ideas of their own. We went in Mr Wayman's cluttered car which he had promised to clean out, but did not, and returned at about 3:15. We sorted out our PPP (power point presentation) during Thursdays STEM session and again this morning.
Mr Wayman reported that the teachers were all interested and impressed with all our STEM work so well done everyone!!
Thanks

Year 8 Faraday Challenge

Today 6 year 8 pupils from STEM club visited Pudsey Grange HIgh School to take part in the IET Faraday 2010 engineering challenge. We were set with the challenge of creating a prototype for home owners to use to move the water out of their houses when it flooded. Although it doesn't seem like it, this is a really serious issue. Just 25cm of water can knock you off your feet and carry you away as the current is so fast. We made a pump mechanism to carry the water out of your home and outside. Originally, we made our device using two acrylic tubes to maximise the flow of water cleared out of your house in a flood. This worked, until we came to test it. As we pumped the water from one tray into another, the valve pushing the water down and up snapped off the dowell! Aaargh!! Our device had to go to A&E to be repaired by 'Guy the technician' just minuites before our presentation in front of 6 pupils from the 5 other schools competing in the challenge.

We all took on different roles, including Grace being the video learning log manager. Click on the video below to find out more!

How did we do? We were really pleased to still come third after all our problems and even more proud to be awarded top marks for our teamwork. We will certainly look forward to supporting next year's challenge! :)

Eggs Factor Project

This week we are starting a project called Eggs Factor, Egg Chasm Crossing. In this project we have to transport an egg safetly across the chasm without breaking it. We are doing the KS3 one where you must transport the egg over 1.75m. You can't touch the egg at anytime and it must not touch the floor. You are not aloud to catapult the egg or fly the egg across the distance. We have looked at the Egg Chasm website to view other peoples. Click here to find out more details. Some of the designs involve gravity related things such as ramps for the egg to go down and carts for the egg to go in.

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!