Student from Eastbourne takes the intermediate winner prize in The Big Bang competition
Ludovica Knight, a Year 10 student from St Catherine’s College in Eastbourne has been awarded the winner’s prize in the intermediate engineering category in the finals of The Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Competition, for her project titled ‘Mechanical Energy Storage for African Village’.
Ludovica made a model demonstration of a mechanical energy storage system. As part of the project, she used a model wind turbine, an old clock spring and gearbox connected to a DC alternator to show that wind energy can be collected in the spring and stored for later use. After building the model, she learnt that energy can be collected in the high-powered clock spring, but many gears were required to make the winding of the stiff spring as easy as possible. If this can be scaled up, it would make energy storage available to remote windy places, such as the mountain villages of Chad, where energy is required to pump water wells.
Over 200 young people submitted projects to this year’s Big Bang Competition, an annual contest designed to recognise and reward young people’s achievements in all areas of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), as well as helping them build skills and confidence in project-based work.
Ludovica wins £750 in prize money to continue on her STEM journey as well as a trophy and certificate.
Other big winners include, Kaede Sugano, who was crowned GSK UK Young Engineer of the Year for her project, ‘RIHLA’. She realised that there weren’t any good websites that accurately compared package holidays from different travel agencies so Kaede came up with her own algorithm to create her own website, which allows users to find the perfect holiday.
Previous winners have gone on to enjoy a range of other achievements on the back of their successes – including, getting backing from businesses for their projects, setting up their own businesses, taking part in conference presentations to industry professionals as well as appearing on the television and radio shows to talk about their projects.
Congratulating the winners, Dr Hilary Leevers, Chief Executive of EngineeringUK, which organises The Big Bang Competition, said:
“There is no denying that students have had to deal with a lot of disruption to their learning in recent months, and the quality of this year’s entries is a testament to their talent, dedication and creativity under these difficult circumstances. Huge congratulations to Ludovica whose innovative project has seen her awarded as the intermediate winner in the engineering category of The Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Competition.
“At a time when we could all use a big dose of optimism for the future, the inventiveness and skill we’ve seen this year’s Big Bang Competition has been a reassuring and inspiring tonic for all those involved in the judging – so we’d like to extend a huge congratulations and heartfelt thank you to everyone who participated.”
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