Big Bang Fair: Day Three

One of the most interesting things for me has been comparing this year to last year. For example, one of our most popular activities from last year, the supercomputing app, has been much quieter this year - but the beanbag sorting game has been a huge hit! 

On the evening of Day Two some of us were able to head along to the awards ceremony for the Big Bang Competition, which was extremely interesting. Over the first two days all the contestants across the various categories were showing off their entries – our stand is right next to some of their displays – all of which were very impressive. 

At the end of the evening, one group each were crowned Young Scientists or Engineers of the Year. The winners in the science category were two boys who had done a citizen science project to determine whether birds have a favourite colour - apparently they do, and it's blue! The Young Engineers of the Year, meanwhile, were another two boys who had created a vest designed to accurately predict seizures for epilepsy sufferers, and can do so with 80% accuracy. This was all the more impressive considering the boys are yet to sit their GSCE exams, and have been working on the project since they were just 14 years old. There was also a huge number of female winners across both the science and engineering categories, which was great to see. 

Day Three also saw the awards given out in the Robotics Challenge. It's fair to say robots have been a bit of a theme this year – they're everywhere! Meccano robots, battling robots at Vex Robotics, drones... there's a robot for every occasion, it seems. 

We just have Saturday to go now, which is the family day, so it should be quite a different experience from the last three days. From asking the schoolkids questions to seeing the competition entries, it's clear that there's real strength here, and things are looking good for the future of STEM.