This year, the University of Edinburgh has become a partner of the Primary Engineer programme. Primary Engineer is a non-profit organisation that promotes engineering skills and careers to Primary School pupils, by working closely with local schools, authorities and industry. Teachers are supported through a professional development training course and drive the Primary Engineer projects in their classes. Engineers visit the classes to help and talk to the students about science and engineering.
Academics at the IMNS are involved since earlier this year in the Primary Engineer programme and asked for postgraduate researchers to join. In February, I first visited Craigour Park Primary School with my colleagues Dr Stewart Smith and Nadira Jamil. We worked with two classes, the primary sevens, on their carnival floats. For this, the children built electric cars with wooden frames, a motor and battery pack. The cars have several gears and are decorated in true style of carnival floats. We mainly helped with stripping and connecting the electrical cables. It was great to see how quickly the children absorbed knowledge, for example by switching their cars to a different gear when they drove up a ramp, or by checking if cables had come loose when the motor did not work. We visited the school again last week to rank the carnival floats according to their ability to drive on a straight line and up a ramp. The best performing carnival floats from each class are entering a competition between different schools.
If you are an engineer and would like to get involved, you can sign up to the Primary Engineer programme on their website.
A Primary Engineer carnival float, powered by tons of enthusiasm and a battery pack.
Recent Comments