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Portswood Primary 'Engineering Week'

Last week, Year 5 held their annual Engineering Week which was a raging success. We started the week by thinking about 'Do we have the power to change the world?'

Lots of us thought that you could only change the world if you have lots of power like Joe Biden or Boris Johnson. Some of us thought about how we could change the world by reducing our pollution. 

Throughout the week we tried our hand at various engineering challenges such as building geodesic domes, trying to make a marble run for 60 seconds with just cardboard and tape and building a bridge out of paper that could hold a large weight. We learned that engineers need to be resilient as often things don't work first time. 

We were very fortunate to have lots of amazing visitors throughout the week. On Tuesday, we met Verity Jackson, who is a mechanical engineer for the Ministry of Defence, and Janet Bonar from Solent university who spoke to us about some of the ways engineers are changing the world by working towards the UN sustainability goals. We had a go at seeing if we could solve some of these problems ourselves and Janet was very impressed with our ideas! 

On Wednesday we were visited by Ed Richardson and his Lazer (a type of sailing boat). He talked us through how his boat works and all about how it is designed to be as streamlined as possible in the water. We even got to sit in the boat! Sylvain Julien (a naval architect) also visited and talked to us about how boats are designed. He explained all about displacement theory and we had a go at seeing if we could make our own buoyant boats out of tin foil.

Finally, Vittorio Boccolini (also from Solent University) visited to talk to us about how land yachts are designed and built. We then finished the week by designing and building our own land yachts which we raced on Friday. The races were exhilarating. Well done to Michal and Lemar for winning the race. 

At the end of the week we all agreed that we do have the power to change the world. Engineers change the world every day by designing, problem solving, fixing and creating. Lots of us now want to be engineers when we grow up. 

Thank you so much to all of our visitors this week. We are incredibly grateful for the support.