Sixth Form Students Attend ‘The Big Bang’ STEM Competition

Last Tuesday, three Upper Sixth chemists travelled to the NEC in Birmingham, accompanied by Mr Snell, to compete in the finals of ‘The Big Bang’ – the UK’s largest STEM competition.

The team of Dan, Lizzie, Korn and Katie have been working on a project to create a low-cost, portable water filtration device that could be distributed to communities in rural Malawi and other third world countries, to reduce the number of deaths associated with water-borne diseases.

Their project was hand-picked to compete in the finals of this prestigious competition, alongside 2000 other projects; this was the first time Kingswood has ever had pupils in the final.

The team arrived on the Tuesday night to set up their stand, which they would present to the judges and to large numbers of the public over the next two days.

In total, 10% of all UK secondary schools booked tickets and over 80,000 visitors from all over the UK flooded in to look at the finalists’ projects.

There was also a huge variety of activities, workshops and shows on offer, demonstrating fun, cutting-edge STEM technology.

Hundreds of companies who lead the way in STEM had stands at the competition, giving the team the opportunity to talk to leaders in their fields, getting a feel for the huge diversity of careers on offer and where the STEM industry is headed in the future.

Despite the high calibre of competition, with the eventual winner having synthesised a new drug to tackle rheumatoid arthritis, the project certainly did not look out of place.

Many companies and individuals notices the projects and gave their contacts to the team, keen to help develop the idea further.

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