{"id":164,"date":"2011-07-20T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.eda.kent.ac.uk\/news-ext\/2011\/07\/20\/schools-race-to-solar-powered-victory\/"},"modified":"2011-07-20T01:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T00:00:00","slug":"schools-race-to-solar-powered-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/engineering-news\/2011\/07\/20\/schools-race-to-solar-powered-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"Schools race to solar-powered victory"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Sixty pupils from secondary schools in Kent participated in a car rally with a difference!  The Solar Car Challenge Competition, aimed at girls and boys aged 13-14 took place at the School of Engineering and Digital Arts (EDA) on 7 July.<br \/>\nDirected by a team of University ambassadors from the School, pupils worked in school teams to compete in a final rally of solar powered cars having previously spent the last six weeks researching, designing and testing their prototypes with guidance from the ambassadors.   Each team had customised and adopted their model to make it unique in style and appearance.  Professional engineers judged the cars in three different competitions; speed, performance on an incline and design innovation, with prizes being awarded to the winners of each category.<br \/>\nPupils gained experience of team building, problem solving skills, a practical application of science and technology as well as insight into solar power and the exciting world of design and engineering.<br \/>\nThe final competition was not only a great success but a fun and engaging activity for young engineers of the future to expand their scientific knowledge as well as learn about renewable energy concepts.<br \/>\nProfessor Sarah Spurgeon, Head of School commented: \u201cWe were really pleased to see so many children from Kent enjoying participating in the Solar Car Challenge, which has been running in other regions for a number of years. The technical ability and commitment of the participating students was fantastic. Working in partnership with our colleagues at Canterbury Christ Church University, EDA very much look forward to hosting the competition next year.\u201d<br \/>\nParticipating schools included: The Harvey Grammar School, Simon Langton Grammar School For Boys, Simon Langton Girls&#8217; Grammar School, St Anselm\u2019s Catholic School.  Also entering the challenge was a group of children from Kazakhstan who were visiting the Langton Boys School and were delighted to participate in this practical project.<br \/>\n\tThe Solar Car Challenge is supported by STEMNET and was run jointly with Canterbury Christ Church University, the local STEMNET hub.  STEMNET aims to increase young people\u2019s choice and chances through science, technology, engineering and mathematics.<br \/>\nThe Judges team included:<br \/>\nDr. Ajay Sharman, STEMNET Regional Director.<br \/>\nDr. Kostas Sirlantzis, School of Engineering and Digital Arts, University of Kent<br \/>\nMrs. Jenny Young, Programme Manager (Engineering) \u2013 National HE STEM Programme (Royal Academy of Engineering)<br \/>\n Mr. Peter Kean, Instro Precision Ltd.<br \/>\nThe teams were judged on Innovation and Design and Speed and the overall winner was<br \/>\nthe \u2018E-Car\u2019 Team from The Harvey Grammar School with \u2018The Beast\u2019 from Simon Langton Girls\u2019 Grammar School as runner-up.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sixty pupils from secondary schools in Kent participated in a car rally with a difference! The Solar Car Challenge Competition, aimed at girls and boys &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/engineering-news\/2011\/07\/20\/schools-race-to-solar-powered-victory\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55249,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/engineering-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/engineering-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/engineering-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/engineering-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/engineering-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/engineering-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/engineering-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/engineering-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/engineering-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}