Mrs K Coldwell, STEM Leader: Mathematics, writes:

On Thursday 5th December, a select group of Year 11 and Year 12 students made their way to the Phoenix Theatre in the West End for one of the annual Maths Inspiration shows. With the set of the hit musical “Come From Away” as a backdrop, the group of Stanborough students alongside several hundred others from other schools heard short talks from four of the biggest names in maths communication.

We arrived just in time to hear Matt Parker (author of “Adventures in the Fourth Dimension” and “Humble Pi” as well as TV, radio and YouTube regular) introducing the first talk, which was delivered by Rob Eastaway, also a well-known author of popular maths books, who spoke about “Maths on the Back of an Envelope”.  He explored a class of problems called Fermi problems (after another mathematician) and asked questions such as “How many sausages will be eaten in Britain today?”  This was followed by Hannah Fry (also a best-selling author and regular on television and radio) giving us a preview of this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on “Secrets and Lies” which will be presented by her on Boxing Day, December 27^th and December 28^th. All will be televised on BBC 4 at 8pm each evening. The final talk was given by Colin Wright on the topic of “Patterns and Predictions” and involved lots of humour and juggling. At the end of the day, we felt privileged to have seen so many gifted maths communicators in one place demonstrating the usefulness and intrigue of
different areas of mathematics.

“Very enjoyable – the speakers were entertaining, and the maths was suitably mind-boggling.” Annabel Dunstan, 11A

“I’m inspired to learn how to juggle, but I probably won’t.” Jack Moylan, 11O

Mrs K. Coldwell, KS5 and G&T Leader, Maths, writes: 

Last week saw Stanborough competing in two different team maths challenges and achieving success in both. On Tuesday, the County Year 7 Team Maths Challenge was held here at Stanborough with a total of 10 teams from other schools competing alongside the two Stanborough teams. Amy Ferry, Maggie Moylan, Daniel Harrington, Aidan Wadley, Lily Reding, Alexis Lyall, Maya Hirani and Tameem Alom worked through a series of rounds involving general maths questions, estimation and memory. Lily, Alexis, Maya and Tameem came second place overall, automatically qualifying for the final in Stevenage in April. Aidan, Daniel, Amy and Maggie came fourth overall but still qualified for the final as high-scoring runners up.

On Wednesday, a group of Year 10s travelled to Barnwell School in Stevenage for the Advanced Maths Support Programme’s local Year 10 Maths Feast. Jack Moylan, Annabel Dunstan, Ellie-Anne Hart and Katie Jeffrey made up one team while Sam Morfill, Janis Benhacene, Thomas Farran and Hannah Davis made up the other. Our minibus companions, Monks Walk, came first overall in terms of points, but Jack, Annabel, Ellie-Anne and Katie were advised that they were also in the top third of the 18 teams competing. In addition, the supervising teacher for Sam, Janis, Thomas and Hannah’s team commented that they “worked very collaboratively and were supportive of each other,” which was very pleasing to hear.

Well done to all competitors!

“The competition was very enjoyable. I surprised myself with how well we overcame the challenges to place respectably!” Annabel Dunstan, 10A

“It was a good competition and we did well to come fourth, but I would have liked to have done even better.” Aidan Wadley, 7H

Lauren Sanders 7O, writes:

On Friday 22^nd June Stanborough’s new Robotics team visited MBDA in Stevenage to compete in the launch event for the annual Robot Rumble Competition.

We had a great time building our robot. When we arrived there was a presentation on the judging scheme, the build and the main event; it sounded so fun. After that we started to build our robot; there were technical challenges with the coding but we got through them. Then we started to properly build the robot. After careful planning we had finally designed the perfect robot, it was light but had a good centre of gravity, the friction and grip of the wheels worked well with the weight and height of the robot. We used an elastic band to organise the cables. There were lots of fiddly parts so we had to use the spanners and Allen keys.

We spent a lot of time getting the right wheels, eventually choosing the medium sized wheels with good friction levels so we could hit the balls into the goal at the end of the coned course (a World Cup theme, of course!). When it was finally time to have our first try at getting around the course it went well but we crashed into a few cones which deducted some seconds off our final time. After our first try we had lunch and got ready for our 2^nd try, we also made a mini replica of the course to test on. On the second go we had almost no mistakes but just before we went to go to the track one of our wheels loosened so we had to do a quick repair. After the 2^nd try we managed to beat our time and we scored all three goals and didn’t hit any cones. Our final time was 7 seconds, a great score! On the leader board we finished in 5th place, a really good place! Thank you to our amazing mentor, Daniel, we couldn’t have done it without you! It was a really fun day, mostly because we worked as a team and had an amazing time.

“It was a great experience, I enjoyed it all and had an amazing time.” Isabel Verlander (7O)

“I learnt about torque (engineering).” Harry Beale (8B)

“My favourite part was building the robot because it was exciting and we had to think outside the box.” Eliezer Lagman (7BM)

“I was so impressed with our new robotics team, they showed excellent communication and team working skills! I look forward to seeing how they do in the next two events.” Mr Benzid

Mrs K. Coldwell, KS5 and G&T Leader, Maths, writes:

Fifteen Year 8 and 9 students made the very short journey to Ocado’s head office in Hatfield on Monday to kick off a STEM project on the theme of Eco-Factories. The students formed themselves into three teams and after an introduction to Ocado, the Go4SET scheme and some key principles of project management, the teams set to work on a challenge to build a high structure capable of holding a significant weight out of art straws and masking tape. All three Stanborough teams took a creative and analytical approach to the task and came up with effective designs, but the team of Alan Del Ciampo 9O, Phoebe Gordon 9S, Ellie-Anne Hart 9A, Mia Walsh 9S and Izzy Wilkins 9H, built the structure which held the most weight of any in the room. Unfortunately, they narrowly missed winning the overall prize as another team had a taller structure.

After the building challenge, the serious business of the day continued with the introduction of the Ocado staff who would be mentoring the teams. After getting to know one another, the teams and mentors began brainstorming ideas for their Eco-Factories, considering what products the factories might be manufacturing and how they might do so sustainably. There was a short break for lunch and then the highlight of the day was a tour of the Ocado warehouse, a building the size of four football pitches spread over five floors, containing a complex network of conveyor belts and home to a combination of automated and human-driven processes. Students experienced the -22°C freezer area (although not for long), had the opportunity to manually bag the plastic totes used for collecting orders and then saw the multi-million-pound machine which Ocado developed to make the process more efficient. The Ocado team member responsible for the bagging area reminded students that their choices at school could either help them to prepare for a job like manual bagging or for a role as an engineer designing and improving the advanced machinery.
The project is now in the students’ hands. With the help of their mentors, they will generate and research ideas and then formulate a report, presentation and display stand to convey their ideas to others.

“It really was an amazing opportunity, and I really enjoyed both the activities and the tour.” Elitsa Ilieva 8A