Engineers Week 2019
Science: Energy and Forces - Magnetism and Electricity
Maths: Sequences and patterns
We were delighted to have a visitor today who is an engineer! Gabriel showed us how different types of engineering affects our daily lives, from our kettles, cars and cameras, to the glasses we wear to see better! He explained to us that he is an Automation Engineer, which means he writes the software that controls real life ROBOTS! We saw a video of the robots in action with engineers working alongside them. We were curious as to where the robots came from, and Gabriel told us that ANOTHER robot made them! This reminded us of the chicken and egg riddle (which we still haven't solved) but at least we discovered today that a human has to make the first robot, and then all the others can be made after that!
We were excited to work with some electrical circuits next, which were more complicated than the ones we had looked at earlier this year. We followed a schematic to connect the wires to the correct fuses, switches, detectors and lights, and when we were finished, Gabriel helped us check over our work.
Next, we put on some safety glasses, and our machines were connected to the power source. We all built metal detector machines, and once the circuit was completed by flipping the switch 'on', we could hold a piece of metal to the detector and the light would go on (or off, depending on which machine we had built). If we held another material beside the detector, such as plastic, there was no change in the light. It was AMAZING! We realised we were real engineers!
Before Gabriel left, he gave us all a bookmark with our names on them, and our very own robot keyrings for our pencilcases!
Maths: Sequences and patterns
We were delighted to have a visitor today who is an engineer! Gabriel showed us how different types of engineering affects our daily lives, from our kettles, cars and cameras, to the glasses we wear to see better! He explained to us that he is an Automation Engineer, which means he writes the software that controls real life ROBOTS! We saw a video of the robots in action with engineers working alongside them. We were curious as to where the robots came from, and Gabriel told us that ANOTHER robot made them! This reminded us of the chicken and egg riddle (which we still haven't solved) but at least we discovered today that a human has to make the first robot, and then all the others can be made after that!
We were excited to work with some electrical circuits next, which were more complicated than the ones we had looked at earlier this year. We followed a schematic to connect the wires to the correct fuses, switches, detectors and lights, and when we were finished, Gabriel helped us check over our work.
Next, we put on some safety glasses, and our machines were connected to the power source. We all built metal detector machines, and once the circuit was completed by flipping the switch 'on', we could hold a piece of metal to the detector and the light would go on (or off, depending on which machine we had built). If we held another material beside the detector, such as plastic, there was no change in the light. It was AMAZING! We realised we were real engineers!
Before Gabriel left, he gave us all a bookmark with our names on them, and our very own robot keyrings for our pencilcases!
