STEAM

VIRGIN GALACTIC SPACE CHAT 4TH YEAR TO U6TH

SATRO CHALLENGE ENGINEERING 2ND, 4TH & L6TH

STEAMSHIP SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING CLUB 2ND - 4TH YEARS

INEOS TEAM UK AMERICA’S CUP STEM COMPETION ALL YEARS

GREEN POWER ELECTRIC CAR ENGINEERING CHALLENGE ALL YEARS

DIGITAL LEADERS CLUB ALL YEARS

DARK ROOM PHOTOGRAPHY CLUB ALL YEARS

Churcher’s has continued to recognise the importance of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics), encouraging students to discover the links between their academic studies and the real world application of the skills learned in class. Despite losing some of our flagship events planned for the Summer Term, our students still enjoyed some remarkable opportunities.

Our Lower Sixth team were awarded second place nationally in the SATRO Problem Solving Challenge, having won their regional heat in which they competed against other schools to design and build a device to gently lower a cargo of sweets from a freestanding tower. Teams from the Second and Third Year also competed and demonstrated great creativity and skill in the event.

Engineers and a future astronaut from Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit took part in two video conferences with Churcher’s students, providing a unique insight into the challenges of manned and unmanned spaceflight respectively. The video conference format provided a fantastic opportunity for our students to put their questions directly to the experts, who provided genuine inspiration with their answers.

The STEAMship club experimented with a new format: a very openended project to build and explain a ‘demonstration of electromagnetic effects’. The results were remarkable, thanks to the perseverance and ingenuity of our Second and Third Years and a little help from Sixth Former Charlie Morris, including a fully functioning miniature Tesla coil and, eventually, a working train made from nothing more than a coil of wire and a single cell battery! Dr R Whittle