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!!??