A team of Trinity Academy students has returned from the UK final of the Bright Ideas Challenge with their heads held high – the local team of five S3 students won through to the grand final of the nationwide competition and picked up a prize of a further £1000 for their school.
The Trinity team had earlier fought off tough competition to win the Scotland regional heat of Shell’s national schools’ competition, earning them a place in the London finals.
Utopia, the Trinity team’s bright idea of a carbon neutral eco-house, includes allotments for food production, communal spaces, recycling initiatives, the use of hydropower as well as systems that convert kinetic energy into electrical energy.
Fergus Veitch, Jenny MacDonald, Archie Powell, Hannah Boldy and Gwilym Hughes won £1,500 to boost the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) teaching at their school.
The team’s victory then saw Trinity travel to London for a VIP STEM experience at Imperial College London, where they built a prototype of their idea and competed against 12 other teams to become the National Champions.
The winner was Aqua Bine from Atrium Studio School in Ashburton, who proposed a way to capture the hydropower of household taps and store the energy to use for powering anything from personal devices to cars.
The National Champions took home an additional £3,500 for their school, and individual prizes for each of the team members. The 21 June event was hosted by Countdown‘s Rachel Riley.
The Bright Ideas Challenge asks young people aged 11-14 to use their STEM knowledge and problem solving skills to imagine innovative solutions for making future cities clean, efficient, vibrant places to live, work and play. By 2070, it’s estimated there will be around 10 billion people on the planet, with demand for energy set to double. This means the world needs to find new ways to produce more energy.
Marcus-Alexander Neil, Shell UK Education Manager, commented: “It is a real thrill to see the ingenuity the students have brought to their competition entries. As the next generation of scientists, mathematicians and engineers they are able look at things from a fresh perspective.
“Our hope is that participating in The Bright Ideas Challenge inspires many of these talented students to apply their classroom learning to real-world problems and become the scientists and engineers the world needs to meet our future energy demand.”
Florence Donaldson, Teacher of Design and Technology and STEM Coordinator from Trinity Academy school said: “Using STEM knowledge to solve a real-world problem opened our students’ eyes to how their lessons can be applied in a real-world context. Competitions like The Bright Ideas Challenge really help our students think big about what’s possible.”
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Congratulations to Trinity Academy for both winning the Scottish heat and reaching the National finals. Great achievement!
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