Annual celebration of engineering
The Young Engineers Annual Celebration of Engineering 2006
Travelling from all parts of the UK, over 80 of the top Young Engineers in the country gathered in London on Monday 11th September to take part in the Young Engineers Annual Celebration of Engineering. In an action packed day, Young Engineer for Britain contestants demonstrated their innovations, club members displayed their clubs’ activities, primary school teams raced to design and build a model of a new Thames Bridge – and everyone was tested on their engineering skills!
In a new venture for Young Engineers, the top nine clubs in the country were challenged to build a model plane with air motor to fly from one of the Old Royal Naval College balustrades. We even got the teachers to form two teams and they competed against their students. All forms of amazing aircraft were built and some even managed to fly whilst a few bore more resemblance to the man-powered flight attempts from Bognor Regis pier the previous weekend! Individual students also competed to build K’Nex buggies which were then raced down the College’s skittle alley.
Once the judging was complete, students had the opportunity to demonstrate their projects to a wide selection of guests including many senior engineers, educationalists and representatives of the engineering industry. They also had the chance to talk to other competitors and to hear about their projects, how they were going to develop them and their next projects. The guests were highly impressed by the quality of the entries, the skill and innovation shown by everyone and the commercial value of the projects. Prior to the Awards Dinner, the Young Engineer Special Awards and the Shape the Future Photographic Competition Awards were presented
Over splendid dinner in the magnificent Painted Hall, Kate Bellingham, President of Young Engineers and Linda Sanford, a very senior IBM executive presented a wide variety of prizes to teams and to individuals. The Young Engineer for Britain 2006 was Ruth Amos of Eckington School, Sheffield for her product – StairSteady. This is a device to assist people climbing and descending stairs.
Ruth was absolutely amazed to win this award and to appear on BBC Breakfast the following day.