'Smart Buildings' STEM Workshop

On Friday 1st February 60 Year 9 girls took part in a STEM workshop which was delivered by The Smallpiece Trust, a charity designed to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths to 12-17 year olds. The aim of the workshop was to inspire young engineers, and allow them to get hands on experience of a STEM project. The project was themed around “Smart Buildings”, specifically the 21st century challenge of providing clean water. Students worked in small teams of 6 to design and build a system to filter, collect, detect and pump collected rainwater as part of an integrated system on a new smart building. Students designed and built a watertight water-collection system, including a built in filtration system. They soldered together an electronic water-detector and made a circuit for a an electric pump in order to detect and then pump the water which had been collected. Students were really engaged with the project which took them out of their comfort zones, and created some very strong competition! The winning team managed to create a fully working water filtration system, while presenting their ideas to the rest of the group in a coherent and professional manner.