Institution news
Over the past year, the University of Sussex Formula Student team, Mobil 1 Sussex Racing, have welcomed a large number of schoolchildren to the University to encourage them to follow a path into engineering and other STEM subjects. This has included hosting two workshops: “Design a Race Car” session for 120 Year 10 pupils who take part in CAD and electronics activities, and “Making Engineering Choices” session for 90 Year 8 pupils to investigate tyre treads and the effects aerodynamics has on cars.
As part of their “Design a Race Car” session, teenagers from eight schools around Sussex got to try their hand at designing components for the Formula Student car using facilities at the University of Sussex run by the team members.
After looking around the garage and seeing their 2017 car, the youngsters were set a series of tasks to give them a glimpse into the life of a modern engineer, such as using computer aided design (CAD) software to re-create the wheel hub being used on their 2018 car, and soldering an electrical circuit board replicating the cooling system.
Their “Making Engineering Choices” sessions have been equally as hands on, with teenagers from around Sussex coming to the University to learn about the dangers of aquaplaning, but also to investigate the difference aerodynamics makes on cars.
The students designed their own version of wet weather tyres out of clay and then tested how well water dissipated through the tread. The teenagers also got to modify a toy car to make it more aerodynamic before testing their designs in the university’s small scale wind tunnel that was built by previous Masters students. For fun, both the tyre tread and aerodynamics were judged by the team’s head of Vehicle Integration team, Oladapo Oyelami, with the winning team receiving a free sign up to the team’s Nosecone club, allowing them to have their signature placed on the front of the team’s 2018 car!
Both sessions were organised by James Bratt, the teams Logistics Director in partnership with the University of Sussex’s Widening Participation team, as they wanted to try to increase the number of women in engineering by reaching out to schoolchildren who may not have considered University as an option for them and schoolchildren from low socio-economic backgrounds.
The feedback the team have received from running these days has been very encouraging; with 100% of attendees stating that, they found the event interesting, enjoyable and fun; 58% of the schoolchildren stated that they were curious to find out more about engineering.
Credit: Ryan Oakley, Communications Director, Mobil 1 Sussex Racing team
Chris Mason Academic Events Manager for University Widening Team had this to say about the team,
“My colleagues and I are extremely proud to work alongside the team at Mobil 1 Sussex Racing to deliver outstanding taster sessions to encourage the next generation of engineers to consider higher education.”
Not content with just these sessions, the team have also attended the “Big Bang @ Eastbourne” STEM event, and will be also be attending the much larger “Big Bang South East” event next month. And finally, they ran a talk in partnership with the University’s “Equality in Engineering” society for our very own Formula Student Project Leader, Lucy Killington.
At this talk, Lucy discussed ways to encourage more women into engineering, particularly getting more women to pursue degrees in engineering. She also spoke about a study conducted concerning groups of women in society and how likely they were to pursue engineering. Currently women only represent 11% of the workforce in engineering. This further shows how vital the work done by the Mobil 1 Sussex Racing team is and they hope to run further events with the Equality in Engineering society to also encourage more females to pursue engineering.
Credit: Ryan Oakley, Communications Director, Mobil 1 Sussex Racing team
Ash Gilliver, team leader for the 2017/18 team said,
“As a team we really enjoy running these sessions, and it makes it extremely rewarding when we see how much the school pupils are enjoying the sessions too. We hope that by running these sessions we’ve shown the pupils that STEM subjects can be fun and interesting, and they will now consider University to study these subjects and maybe one day run similar sessions to inspire their next generation. Further to this, the team have also tried to be more inclusive this year, by welcoming students from all year groups to get involved with the team from various degree disciplines, including; Engineering, Product Design and Business Management.”
Find out more about this year’s Mobil1 Sussex Racing team, head over to their website at www.sussex.ac.uk/sussexracing or find them on their Facebook page – Mobil 1 Sussex Racing.