This being the third year that students from Sherfield have entered the competition, it was very interesting to see the new challenge that this year’s competition would bring. As always the environment there was very friendly and there were lots of schools in attendance which led to some interesting designs being created.
The brief this year, was to create a moving object that with the use of pulleys would be able to pick up and remove a “barrel of toxic waste”; this ended up being a very fun challenge which at the start seemed very daunting as many of us had never done something like this before however, once a basic design was drawn out the making commenced. There are two categories on the day: the portfolio prize and the overall prize. This meant that for the first two hours the students needed to concentrate on the creation of the portfolio as that needed to be handed in by lunch, there was a lot of team work required to get this completed and with the pressure of the judges walking around it was quite a challenge to get it finished on time. For the next 2 hours the making part of the challenge started and that involved copious amounts of trial and error to be able to get correct, this led to a few stressful situations but an overall good day.
Sherfield Team 1 ended up coming away from the competition victorious when they won both of the prizes available which was quite the achievement as the school has never managed to win the overall award before. Overall it was a very enjoyable experience that many of us would love to take part in again.
- Emily Davies (Year 10)
