Grosvenor Grammar School students win engineering competition

A team of students from Grosvenor Grammar School is celebrating their recent win in Rotary Ireland's Technology Tournament engineering challenge at the 2019 Big Bang Fair.

The annual Big Bang science fair took place last week in Ulster University's Jordanstown campus, run by educational charity Sentinus. Over 3,000 students from 130 schools across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland came together at this year's Big Bang for a series of talks, competitions and live events designed to spark a lifelong interest in the STEM fields.

The event was a major success for one team from Grosvenor Grammar School, who entered and won Rotary Ireland's Technology Tournament engineering challenge. The event tasked 10 teams from secondary schools with creating a model bridge that could fuction as the gateway to a busy port and move to support the passage of tall ships, with limited resources and time constraints.

The students had to design and build their model bridge using only simple materials on-hand such as jumbo straws, plasticine, string, drawing pins, and card. The winning entry from students at Grosvenor Grammar featured a fully functioning pulley system using string to move the bridge, putting an idea the students had encountered in their technology classes into practical use.

Rotary Club of Belfast President Karen Blair commented: "This has been a hugely exciting event for Rotary Ireland and we are delighted that has featured as one of the key competitions at the Big Bang Event. Northern Ireland has a lot of very talented young people and one of our many objectives is to further support the development of STEM subjects amongst the young people of Ireland. This event is a great way of doing that as the enthusiasm, competitiveness and of course camaraderie has been evident throughout the entire day."

Sentinus CEO Bill Connor said "We have always enjoyed a mutual understanding with Rotary Ireland, who are also heavily involved with supporting young people and their education. We believe their involvement with the Big Bang Event and the Technology Tournament provides a great synergy with Sentinus and what we are trying to promote, the future is in the hands of our young people and both our organisations believe that STEM subjects will play a pivotal role in the future of the NI economy."

Source: Written based on press release