Simon Proctor, BLOODHOUND Education Associate/Ambassador reports on a magnificent day of fun and learning at Mayfield School in Walsall, thanks to Jas Thandi of BLOODHOUND and the Ambassador engineering team.
At Mayfield School, head of DT, Mrs Higgins, already has the schoolchildren finely honed in car building skills due to the school’s motorised car project, which is nearing completion. So we were privileged to be in the esteemed company of 24 fired-up young car designers.
The day started with Jas arriving promptly with his rocket kits and explaining the method of construction to Year 6 students. It then ran like a finely oiled machine, helped by Mrs Higgins who had the kids working with military precision – ‘REME’ style! Design, shaping, construction, graphics and bling were followed by final fixes prior to lunch (which seemed to incorporate loads of school glue on anything liable to go airborne). We had spare wheels, aero attachments inspired by Ambassador Jon Kimber and final inspection and scrutinising carried out by Ambassador Gerry Boycott.
Choose your rocket…
Jas, Jon, Gerry and I then headed down to the 55.5m long tarmac play area that was flat enough to land a typhoon jet fighter (top rocket car track Mayfield!). Jas went through the setup, risk and method statement, as you do need to consider safety first, and then we assigned the tasks, such as timer, rocket loader, wire man and launcher. Next we had to fire off a test car, which is necessary, Jas explained, to make sure that the correct power rocket is selected for the length of run. These rockets ranges from A to B to C and so on, with A being the lowest power, and for Mayfield the C rockets were decided upon.
Crowd control was then organised by selecting and taping off safe zones for viewing by the rest of the school, along with parents, teachers and ‘Her Majesty’s press’.
…and launch your car!
We were now ready for the 14.00hrs launch and all vehicles were pre-loaded on to the containment wire run.
The cars were fantastic and achieved speeds of 37mph to over 68mph. It was interesting to note that learning objectives in aerodynamics were met as the brick-shaped car built by the ‘mass transport specialist’ students was the slowest and it was no surprise that the BLOODHOUND-shaped car (actually named BLOODHOUND) exceeded speeds of 68mph, which is an inspiration to the BLOODHOUND team at the BLOODHOUND Technical Centre!
The icing on the cake was that Gerry at one time lived near the Hakskeen Pan and Jon’s employer Hexagon Metrology measure the BLOODHOUND car, so a question and answer session was rolled into the day, which included discussions about elephants, scorpions and tidal movements in the Severn Estuary.
My thanks to Jas and Mayfield School for such a super day!
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