Our STEM Ambassadors brought the LEGO Dragster Challenge to Brooklands Museum's Innovation Academy, giving Year 8 pupils a hands-on experience with real engineering.
On Wednesday 7 October, a team of Motion Applied STEM Ambassadors headed to Brooklands Museum to take part in this year's Innovation Academy.
Throughout the day, we worked with Year 8 pupils from seven local schools, introducing them to engineering through our flagship STEM activity, the LEGO Dragster Challenge.
Students were challenged to design, build, test and improve a LEGO dragster to race along a 10-metre track. By experimenting with different wheels and elastic bands, recording their results and refining their designs, they put into practice the same principles our engineers use every day: test, learn and improve. Each session finished with the all-important final drag race to find the fastest design.
The feedback from teachers was fantastic:
The feedback from teachers was fantastic:
“Very engaging activity, thank you they loved it”
“The students got to test their theories and make group decisions"
“Great opportunity to investigate variables and be logical”
Matthew Neilan-Bell, Junior Product Manager at Motion Applied
It was a real privilege to support our LEGO Dragster workshop at Brooklands. The students were highly engaged throughout, and it was rewarding to watch their enthusiasm for problem-solving grow as they analysed results, adapted their designs and worked together to go faster. It's the same engineering mindset we apply every day at Motion Applied, and hopefully we've inspired some of the next generation to consider a future career in the industry.
Engineering isn't about getting everything right first time. It's about experimenting, learning from the results and making the next version better. Hopefully, amongst this year's LEGO dragsters were some of the engineers of the future.
Thank you to Brooklands Museum, the participating schools and everyone at Motion Applied who helped make the day a success.