Students from the Department of Mechanical Engineering have won a top award for promoting engineering to school children.
Graham Iles and Charlie Duncan presented a racing car built by last year’s student racing team, TBR11, to impress A Level students at a competition organised by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE).
Graham and Charlie are both undergraduate students and members of the University’s Formula Student racing team. They have been designing and building a new racing car in preparation for the Student Formula 2012 competition next summer.
The pressure was on when they competed against other Formula Student teams from the University of Hertfordshire and Oxford Brookes University, to engage an audience of 250 A Level students in engineering, in front of judges from several Formula 1 teams.
The three university teams have consistently been the best British teams over the last eight years in the international Formula Student competition held at Silverstone each July.
They were required to make a technical presentation to the Formula 1 judges detailing their design philosophy and methodology, a motivational talk to the A level students to promote the exciting opportunities offered by a career in engineering, and finally they displayed their Formula racing car for it to be inspected during a thorough question and answer session.
The Formula Student competition aims to give engineering student practical experience.
The Bath team were praised by the F1 judges in particular for their focus on very low weight. At 155kg, their car was the lightest in the whole competition at Silverstone this year, which reflected the team’s innovative approach and their mission statement “design it simple, design it light and build it early.”
Graham said: “This was a new challenge for us. We’ve been working on the next Formula Student racing car for some time now, ready for the race in July 2012. Communicating such technical work to A Level students was quite different though, and we’re really pleased to have won the competition.”
Charlie added: “It’s great to have a chance to show A Level students the exciting things you can do in engineering. There are so many opportunities at the University, and with the Formula Student project being highly regarded by future employers, this was a great chance to both showcase our work and impassion the next intake of engineers.”
Charlie and Graham are now in their final year of study, and their Formula Student team is currently building its car ready for next summer’s races. You can watch their progress on the team’s website.
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