On Tuesday 6^th of February, the Computer Scientists of Year 11, 12 and ICT students of Year 13 were fortunate enough to receive a lecture from a Cyber Security and Digital Forensics expert from Birmingham City University. It was a truly inspiring and informative talk, as Mr Shabbir discussed the dynamic nature of the world as we know it: ever-changing due to innovation and increasingly powerful technology, and (as always) the demerits of this change – hacking, viruses, ransomware and so on. The seminar engaged the students in various activities, such as spotting out the seemingly meaningless digital devices in a home that can be used to find out the causes of a death. For example, the smartwatch worn by the deceased measures their heartrate and therefore could show the time of death. He talked about Steganography – the art of hiding data within other data: for example, using bit manipulation to hide a name, number or even another picture within a picture. Data hidden using steganography is extremely difficult as it is nearly impossible to know what you are looking for. For this reason, Mr Shabbir explained, this technique is being increasingly used by criminals worldwide. However, new and exciting technology is being introduced every day to help combat this issue. He also explained how digital forensics involves more than just cyber crime and it can be used in conjunction with normal crime e.g. a bank robbery, or even in civil cases like determining who receives custody of children in a divorce. The soon-to-be professor summed up the talk by informing the students of the various undergraduate (BSc) and postgraduate degrees available at BCU: Big Data Analytics, Computer Forensics and Advanced Computer Science (postgraduate only). Overall, it was a fascinating experience that the students, as well as staff, quite thoroughly enjoyed.

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Britney Okhiria, 12AFI

The trip to the Maths Feast, which was arranged by Mr Sangar, was both enjoyable and informative. It was made up of 5 rounds and was designed to look like a food menu. It was designed to test your algebraic and arithmetic skills and worked on topics not covered in the class room such as the 3d cube challenge. After the morning rounds there was a brief lunch break and then we resumed with the dessert round with shapes. In conclusion the trip was a nice day out with fun maths involved so I would recommend it to anyone who gets offered this opportunity.

Terence Nduka 10N.

On Friday 26^th January ten Year 8 students went to Oxford University on a physics trip. We did three main activities. The first one was called ‘super salad spinners’.  In this, we learnt about particle accelerators and built a mini accelerator from a salad bowl and some metal tape.  Two strips of tape in the bowl were charged negatively and two positively.  A ping pong ball with a special coating would then get a positive charge and be attracted to a strip of negatively charged tape and then get a negative charge, and so be attracted to positive tape.  As this repeats the ball goes around in a circle; our ball went around twice. In the other activities we carried out a lot of practicals, and saw demonstrations, about electrostatics.  These included Van de Graaf generators, charging by rubbing and splitting a flame using charged metal plates.  During the day, we were given marks for filling in workbooks and our contributions.  At the end, we had a presentation and Handsworth Grammar School were narrowly beaten into second place out of the eighteen schools that went. The trip was great fun and taught us a lot about physics.

Eisa Yacoob

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