Computer Science STEM trip to Williams Racing
On Friday 6th October 40 Computer Science students visited the Williams Racing F1 Experience Centre in Oxfordshire. A diverse range of activities were completed throughout an exciting day which related to job opportunities and experiences you can have within many employment sectors, such as technology, engineering, aerospace, product design and developing teamwork skills. The engaging itinerary went like this:
The first activity was programming a racing car using LEGO Mindstorms, a series of engineering and code-based machines released officially by LEGO that can be physically built by the user and can be coded to do certain actions using an app similar to Scratch, a block-based coding language. We also designed a company to sell it, making an advert using the iPads, and creating the company logo to simulate marketing a product correctly. We all presented our ideas on stage and our work was graded by our teachers to decide the winning group – our congratulations go to Farhan’s winning team who were awarded official F1 merchandise caps from the Williams Racing team.
The second activity was a guided tour of the history of Formula One cars where we saw the evolution of the cars physically changing over the years, and the idea behind why the designers changed the cars for the better. We were also shown a video on how the company of Williams started and grew as a business to become the monolith it is today.
And finally, we experienced a gaming simulation of driving a Formula One car where we all raced each other in maps modelled from actual Formula One racing circuits. We raced three times against twenty people which was an exhilarating experience of real-world Formula One scenarios.
Overall, the day was engaging and fun with everyone enjoying learning about the world of technology and engineering.
Jack Ward, 9W and Zayd Mirzoyev 9G.
