The Faraday Challenge Winners!

Croydon High took part in The Faraday Challenge with 36 of our Year 8 pupils. This was an amazing event that allowed pupils to independently design and make a product using their science and engineering skills. The organisers and our science staff were impressed by the creativity, resilience and ingenuity shown on the day by our students. The winning team of Lexie G, Farrah M-H, Brooke H, Malika M, Maryam A and Honor J each won a £10 gift voucher and a plaque. Their score will now be entered into the national competition that runs throughout the year.

The Faraday Challenge is run by the IET (The Institution of Engineering and Technology) and every year they get a sponsor to run a national competition for Year 8 students in Britain to develop their engineering skills. This year their sponsor was an eco friendly hospital (Alder Hey Children’s hospital) and the task was to make younger patients (or their visitors) feel more relaxed while in hospital but to keep it eco friendly.

Below is an account from our winning team:

Once we discovered what the task was, we started brainstorming and Farrah said how the bed in hospitals were uncomfortable and then everything came together from there. In the end we came up with the idea to design a sensory cot which was activated by a pressure pad, when the pressure was put on the pad the lights would turn on, a fan would start and music would play.

Now obviously, we weren’t going to be able to build that in one day. Therefore we counted up our faraday bucks and our elected accountant Malaika and Farrah went to the shop to see what we could do with the money we had (which was 120) while the rest of us started looking into the electrical side of things because we had to build it.

This was really cool because we were all in charge of the money, the idea, and what direction we went in with our product. We also worked well as a team, everyone listening to each other and adding to each other’s ideas.

We had to complete a log of our progress throughout the day where we wrote down everything that went well or didn’t go so well and what we would do differently with our idea.

By the end of the day we had created a pressure pad for a cot or bed (using foil and wire). When this was activated it turned on:

• 4 LED lights which would be on the ceiling and could be linked to colour or shapes to soothe and relax the patient;
• a fan started to spin to make sure the patient didn’t get too hot;
• a buzzer which was supposed to represent music.

We also used a series of parallel circuits throughout our product so that we didn’t have to add more than one battery.

We had to sell/pitch our idea at the end of the day. This was the most stressful part because we had 2 minutes to put forward our idea and explain why it works, and why it would be needed. And on top of that we also had to demonstrate our product which in our case was Maryam sitting on the chair and everything working. But in the end, it went pretty well with everyone contributing and being really proud of our product.

Overall, it was a really fun experience which showed us how to work as a team, how to overcome obstacles, and how to not go bankrupt. We learned a lot about engineering and electronics in the process.

Mrs Conrad

Head of Science