Girls from a top independent school left the boys trailing in their wake when they scooped the prizes at a major engineering competition.
Teams from Howell’s School, the all girls boarding school in Denbigh, filled the top two places in the Year Nine Engineering Challenge event organised by Careers Wales North East and Deeside College staff, and held at Deeside College.
Their task was to design, construct, and operate a model of a ‘Rope Spinning Machine’, using sewing thread, with motorised and programmable controllers; but they also had to take into account not only the number of twists in the four threads and the effective use of the controller with two motors, but also the number and cost of the components, and the size of the ‘footprint’ of the machine.
The winning Howell’s team was an Anglo-Spanish combination of Zoe Redgrave-Scott, aged 15, from Alderley Edge, Maria de Luna Blanco, aged 13, from Seville, and Laura Ferreiro, aged 14, from Barcelona.
Val Bardsley Ashall of Careers Wales North East visited the school to present the trophy and she said: “It was quite a complex challenge and there were a total of 45 students there from schools throughout North East Wales.
“We do want to encourage girls, as well as boys, to think about a career in engineering, and the girls from Howells made a really valiant effort. I hope their success inspires more girls to consider going into engineering.
“I was really impressed with all of the Year 9 entries because they seemed very open to different ideas.’
The winning teams were chosen by members of the Engineering Centre for North and Mid Wales. Dr Iestyn Pierce, one of the adjudicators, said “We were really impressed with the machines from the Howells teams. They combined excellent mechanical and electronic design ideas, and worked very well.”
Zoe Redgrave-Scott said: “It was a challenge but I am interested in engineering and physics so it was a lot of fun. We tried lots of things at first, but we managed to get there in the end and come up with something that worked.”
Robert Head, who teaches Physics at Howell’s, said: “I’m very pleased with them. It was a very demanding challenge to make a Rope Spinning Machine similar to one that is used in industry to entwine the strands of cable together.
“The students even had to do some electronics to get the motors to work, and they used rolls of cotton to simulate the rope, and they had to get as many twists in the rope as possible.
“In a factory of course space is money, so they had to pay attention to the footprint of the machine, and they even had to cost everything.”
In second place in the Year 9 competition was another Howell’s team, consisting of Buddug Williams, Emily Duller, and Cara Harrison.
Howell’s Academic Principal, Emma Jones, said: “The shortage of engineers in the UK has been in the news this week and we’re delighted to show that there’s no shortage of engineering expertise here at Howell’s.
“The image of an engineer as someone covered in muck with an oily rag in his back pocket is outdated – engineering is sophisticated and at the cutting edge of technology and there are great opportunities available for our students.
“We’re delighted that the girls have done so well – at Howell’s we want to give our students as many opportunities as we can to explore different career options and there’s no reason why girls can’t have careers in engineering, particularly in an area where Airbus and Toyota are two of the biggest and most advanced companies.”
