The IET Faraday Challenge gives Year 8 pupils experience of research, design and production of prototype solutions to tough engineering problems.

“Rescue me" "Helicopter OK”

A group of Year 8 students breathed in relief as these messages were successfully received in a cut off town 10km away. Fortunately the disaster wasn’t real, but part of an IET Faraday Challenge day hosted by the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

A natural disaster had devastated Town B and bought down communication systems. Our field engineers in Town A had to build a device to transmit messages to Town B. Using batteries, cardboard, switches, buzzers, light bulbs and coloured plastic our five groups successfully designed a variety of prototypes and devised a code to transmit the messages.

A team from Grieg Academy realised that the mountain range between the two towns could make transmission of messages difficult and so included mirrors in their system to reflect off the clouds. Groups from Nightingale Academy, Highgate School and the London Nautical School all employed systems using light and sound.

The day’s challenge was won by a group from Goldolphin and Latymer School who designed a system using three buzzers with different tones and a cryptograph based on musical notes.