A proud team displays their fan-powered car

This year some 300 children will be competing to build the best Fan-Powered Car. The children work in teams to construct a prototype car, which they use as a test bed for different ideas and a means of figuring out which factors affect the performance of the car and why. They then use this information to help them build a better, faster car.

Each school has it’s own competition to find their best car and these cars are then invited to the final.

It’s an exciting year because the Wonderstruck Cup has been held by the two schools of the Tarka Federation (The Clinton School, Merton and Dolton Primary) for the last three years. Can the prestigious champions title be taken by someone else this year?

76 days old and still looking...well...edible

If you visit our Facebook page you’ll know all about our current world-leading scientific research programme – the Immortal Burger.

The Immortal Burger is actually a cheeseburger meal purchased from a well-known purveyor of beef patties in buns. The said meal was purchased on 31st January 2012 and since then has been sitting, untouched, on a plate in the Wonderstruck offices.

We thought it might be worth posting a picture here to update you on our progress. If that’s whet your appetite (no pun intended) take a look at the daily pictures on our Facebook page and join in the discussion as to what’s actually going on.

Sometimes the parachutes on our water rocket stages don't open

We had a great time over National Science & Engineering Week this year. Over 1500 miles travelled and 1400 school pupils filled with the wonders of science!

We launched rockets in Burton upon Trent, raced fan-powered cars in Goonhavern and set fire to stuff in Hemel Hempstead and lots more in between.

Can’t wait till next year!

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Our latest project was to develop arch building kits for the Tower of London education team to use in some of their sessions.  The base doubles as storage for the blocks and supporting scaffold.  All the wood work is made from hand-sawn oak and the stone work is made in our own secret faux stone concoction.

A dramatic demo from our Fantabulous Exploding Science Show

It’s been a grey and wet start to the New Year over here in the UK but we’re putting the finishing touches to some great new Workshops & Shows to brighten up the dull winter months.

We had a great time piloting our ‘Fantabulous Exploding Science Show’ at Petroc’s Bloodhound SSC STEM Conference back in December. About 800 primary, secondary and post-16 students saw the shows along with an evening show for local employers which included a keynote speech by Richard Noble OBE, Director of the Bloodhound SSC Project.

The Fantabulous Exploding Science Show is now a part of the Wonderstruck repertoire, along with our ‘Throwing Your Weight Around’ show which follows a forces and motion theme to tie in with this year’s National Science and Engineering Week.

We’re also putting together our ‘Robot Explorer’ workshop which gives Key Stage 2 & 3 pupils a chance to build simple robot planetary explorers fitted with small wireless cameras. The robots use simple switch activated sensors to navigate and explore their environment but the really exciting thing is that we actually launch the robots using our Heavy Lift Water Rocket. The plan is that the robots deploy by parachute and are then activated on touch down, sending wireless pictures back to Mission Control.

We hope to have this all up and running for March or April and as with all space ‘firsts’ we’ll be streaming live pictures of the first launch on the website. So watch this space.

We had an absolutely brilliant time at the first Abu Dhabi Science Festival running our Compressed Air Rocket Workshop and Fan-Powered Cars Workshop on the Corniche. 

Over the three days we were there between 1500 and 2000 children went through both workshops and we certainly couldn’t have done it without the help of our Science Communicators – thanks guys! 

We also mustn’t forget to thank Louise, Peter, Brian and Rachel and all the other guys from Edinburgh Science Festival who worked so hard to make it all run smoothly. 

Hope to see you all again next year.

Check out the details at http://www.abudhabisciencefestival.ae/

So, if you happen to be in Abu Dhabi for that weekend pop over and so hello to Peter & Ricky from Wonderstruck!