Celebrating Girls in STEM on Ada Lovelace Day
11 October 2022
After the success of the previous STEM events with the Guides, we welcomed 2nd Milton Guides to our offices to demonstrate the potential careers and opportunities in engineering. After a quick brief and tour of our facilities, we went straight into the activities for the evening.
The first activity demonstrated how we work to get a project off the ground. From initial brainstorms to a demonstration of rapid prototyping using our in-house facilities. The Guides demonstrated the iterative design process while creating their own solutions for our recent charity project for Humanos 3D.
The next activity focused on the importance of working to requirements in design. The Guides were tasked with building a Lego bridge over a river. However, the bridge had some requirements. It had to be tall enough to let the Springboard yacht “Legolas” under while still allowing the Springboard private jet to fly over. The Guides rose to the challenge, working in small teams to produce some innovative designs ready for testing.
The final task for the Guides was to test their bridges! The Guides placed weights up to 5kg (or even more for the most stubborn bridges!) to test the maximum strength of their bridges. These final tests demonstrated the final stages of the design process.
It was brilliant seeing the Guides excited by the work we do and learning about the key processes used across STEM. Hopefully, we’ve inspired a few more engineers for the future! If you have a budding engineer looking for real work experience, we highly recommend the Year in Industry scheme for school leavers, which offers placements in different disciples before further education.
Written by Joshua Aubrey