June 2021

May 2021

April 2021

March 2021

Ready for a summer of science with people from all around the world?

July 5^th - 16^th 2021

Barcelona International Youth Science Challenge, join this life-changing experience!

The theme for British Science Week 2021 is Innovating for the future.

Science at home activities:

February 2021

Virtual Faraday Challenge

for everyone to try at home:

This season we have extended the Faraday Challenge Day programme to include a Virtual Faraday Challenge to give you more ways to get involved in the programme.

Our Faraday Challenge Day theme partner this season is Network Rail.

The Virtual Faraday Challenge is open for anyone between 7-15, young people can do this at home, in school, individually or as a group or family.

Based on a real-world problem, the Virtual Faraday Challenge brings together STEM subjects (science, design and technology, engineering and maths) in an engaging way and encourages the development of young people’s problem solving and communication skills.

This season’s Virtual Faraday Challenge tasks young people to see if they can assist the work of Network Rail in helping them to sustainably manage the increasing numbers of passengers using their network and minimise their impact on the environment.

The brief for the challenge is given by video from our Faraday Challenge Day Challenge Leaders and young people have to demonstrate that they have the engineering skills required to think of a solution and produce a design of their idea. If they want to also build a model of their idea, we would love to see them!

Designed to inspire young people to get creative, there is no time limit, but we will only be able to judge their ideas on what they present to us. Entries need to be submitted as a PowerPoint presentation following the guidance in the brief. The best entries will receive a prize and may even feature on our website.

Do you know someone who is up for the challenge?

For more details follow the link below.

January 2021

Happy New Year!!!

Recommended to watch "A perfect planet"

December 2020

New STEM club for y8 starting January 2021

November 2020

The Imperial College London is running a webinar series for students with Black African or Black Caribbean heritage in Years 7-13 who are interested in studying STEM subjects at university. These webinars will be a fantastic opportunity for students to find out more about studying at university, future career options, and speak to current Imperial students. They will take place every Saturday from 21^st November- 12^th December:

Discover Imperial

Saturday 21 November, 14.00–15.00

This session is aimed at students in Year 7–Year 13.

Choose your future in STEMM

Saturday 28 November, 14.00–15.30

This session is aimed at students in Year 7–Year 13.

Careers showcase

Saturday 5 December, 14.00–15.00

This session is aimed at students in Year 7–Year 13 and is run in partnership with Women in the City Afro-Caribbean Network.

Goal Setting & Revision Techniques

Saturday 12 December, 13.00–15.15

This session is aimed at students in Year 10–Year 13 and is run in partnership with The Ladder Project.

Students from other year groups are also welcome.

For more information and to register for each session please go to https://www.imperial.ac.uk/be-inspired/student-recruitment-and-outreach/schools-and-colleges/students/on-campus-activities/events/stemm-futures/

Women in STEM

Background and Women in STEM Statistics

It is widely acknowledged that STEM careers are male dominated. Percentage of women in STEM statistics include just 15% of Engineering graduates are female. The percentage of women in STEM for technology and mathematics are 19% for Computer Studies and 38% for Maths. The shortfall is hardly surprising when we consider that 13% of the overall UK STEM workforce are women in STEM and there are relatively few female STEM women role models as a consequence. Employers who do not actively target female candidates are likely to receive significantly fewer job applications from female candidates.

Women in STEM Resources:

October 2020

Black history month is seen as a time to celebrate the positive contributions that black people have made to British Society, this post focuses on the contributions to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Historically significant contributions from early pioneers included:

• Mary Seacole (born 1805 in Kingston Jamaica), funded her trip to the UK to work in helping the wounded during the Crimean war. She worked on yellow fever cholera and was a pioneer on wound care.

• Dr Rice (born 1848), the son of a freed slave, settled in Plumstead South London after completing his studies at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. He extended antiseptic research to South London hospitals and Schools.

• Dr Harold Moody (born 1882) came to England in 1904 to study medicine at King’s College in London, he qualified in 1910 having won several academic awards.

• Audrey McCracken (born 1936 in Barbados), came to England to study nursing at Hillingdon Hospital in 1959. She did pioneering research into Special Care Baby Units.

Katherine Johnson: A Lifetime of STEM

NASA mathematician, trailblazer in the quest for racial equality, contributor to the first triumphs in human spaceflight and champion of STEM education, Katherine G. Johnson stands among NASA’s most inspirational figures.

Katherine Johnson loved to count. “I counted everything. I counted the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed … anything that could be counted, I did.” And so it began for this young girl from West Virginia in the US . Born in 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., Johnson’s love for mathematics was inherent, an inclination she had from birth. At a young age, she was ready and anxious to go to school. She can vividly remember watching her older siblings go to school and wishing so much that she could go with them. The opportunity to attend school finally did come. Johnson so excelled that she began her studies in the second grade, then moved into advanced classes. By age 10, Johnson was in high school.

Katherine Johnson

In school, one teacher stood out to Johnson. Miss Turner taught geometry, and Johnson couldn’t wait to take her class. The teacher was a great encourager to the students and a strong mentor to many of them. Johnson did so well in her classes that she graduated early from high school, and at age 15 she entered West Virginia State College. She had two years before having to declare a major, so Johnson wavered between English, French and mathematics. One of her professors at West Virginia State College helped Johnson with her choice. She told Johnson, “If you don’t show up for my class, I will come and find you.” And so it was, through part threat and part joke, Johnson steered her way into what was already her first love: mathematics.

At West Virginia State College, Johnson became immersed in academia and the mathematics program. She loved being surrounded by smart people, she said, and knew all of the professors and students on campus. One of her professors, the renowned Dr. William W. Schiefflin Claytor, recognized the bright and inquisitive mind that Johnson had. “You’d make a great research mathematician,” he told her. Then professor Claytor did something else. He told Johnson that he would help her become one. Johnson said, “Many professors tell you that you’d be good at this or that, but they don’t always help you with that career path. Professor Claytor made sure I was prepared to be a research mathematician.” He saw that Johnson took all of the mathematics classes listed in the catalog that were needed to pursue her life’s passion, and even went so far as to create a class in analytic geometry of space just for her. At age18, Johnson graduated summa cum laude with Bachelor of Science degrees in mathematics and French. Johnson recalls of her professor, “Claytor was a young professor himself, and he would walk into the room, put his hand in his pocket, and take some chalk out, and continue yesterday’s lesson. But sometimes I could see that others in the class did not understand what he was teaching. So I would ask questions to help them. He’d tell me that I should know the answer, and I finally had to tell him that I did know the answer, but the other students did not. I could tell.”

Johnson ended up teaching after college; at that time, teaching was the only option for her in her community. She left teaching to marry and start her family. When her husband fell ill in 1952, she began to teach again. And then one day, at a family function in the 1950s, a relative mentioned to Johnson that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor to NASA, was hiring. They were specifically looking for African-American females to work as “computers” in what was then their Guidance and Navigation Department. In the 1950s, pools of women at NACA did calculations that the engineers needed worked or verified. Johnson immediately applied for the job, but the agency already had filled its quota for the year. By the time the next year rolled around, Johnson had applied again and found herself with two contracts on her table. One was a contract to teach, and one was to work for NACA. Remembering what professor Claytor had always told her about becoming a research mathematician, she took the job at NACA.

Johnson began working for NACA in 1953. Her work in the agency was a day-to-day progression. She started as one of the women who worked on problems assigned from the engineers in what was then the Guidance and Control Branch. As Johnson worked on the problems, she would ask questions. She didn’t want to just do the work — she wanted to know the “hows” and the “whys” and then the “why nots.” None of the other women had ever asked questions before, but by asking questions, Johnson began to stand out. She was told that women didn’t participate in the briefings or attend meetings; she asked if there were a law against it. The answer, of course, was no, and so Johnson began to attend briefings. NACA was just beginning its work on space. Space itself may be perceived as a series of plane surfaces, and as Johnson became known for her training in geometry, she began to work with the team more and more. Eventually, she became known as a leader, and the men increasingly relied on her. She remembers quite clearly her experience at the time. “The women did what they were told to do,” she explained. “They didn’t ask questions or take the task any further. I asked questions; I wanted to know why. They got used to me asking questions and being the only woman there.” It was this inquisitive nature that made her a valuable resource to the team and the only woman at the time to ever be pulled from the computing pool to work on other programs.

In 1957, Katherine provided some of the maths for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology, a compendium of a series of 1958 lectures given by engineers in the Flight Research Division and the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD). Engineers from those groups formed the core of the Space Task Group, the NACA’s first official foray into space travel, and Katherine, who had worked with many of them since coming to Langley, “came along with the program” as the NACA became NASA later that year.

In 1960, she and engineer Ted Skopinski coauthored Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, a report laying out the equations describing an orbital spaceflight in which the landing position of the spacecraft is specified. It was the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division had received credit as an author of a research report.

Then in 1962, President John F. Kennedy charged the country to send a man to the moon. Johnson became part of the team, and she began to work on calculating the trajectory for America’s first space trip with Alan Shepherd’s 1961 mission, an early step toward a moon landing. She went on to do the calculations for the first actual moon landing in 1969.

Johnson worked at the agency until 1986, when she retired after 33 years of service. During her tenure at NASA, Johnson received many prestigious awards. Among them were the NASA Lunar Orbiter Award and three NASA Special Achievement Awards. She was named Mathematician of the Year in 1997 by the National Technical Association. In addition to these NASA awards, Johnson has been honoured with an honorary Doctor of Law degree from the State University of New York and honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Capitol College in Maryland and Old Dominion University in Virginia. At the degree ceremony in New York, Johnson discovered at the last minute that not only was she an honouree, but she was also the keynote speaker. With her esteemed career to draw upon, Johnson rose to the occasion and spoke with the audience. She referred to it as a “chat” with the graduates. A 45-year-old relative of a graduate told Johnson after the ceremony that, because of her “chat,” she was returning to school the following fall to complete her degree.

Today, Johnson is enjoying her retirement. She likes to travel, play bridge, watch sports and spend time with her family. She has participated in many panels and conferences, including the NASA Trailblazers and Legends STEM Conference in Cape Canaveral, Fla., in 2010. She often speaks to students about her own extraordinary career and encourages all of them to pursue STEM careers. Johnson tells them, “We will always have STEM with us. Some things will drop out of the public eye and will go away, but there will always be science, engineering and technology. And there will always, always be mathematics. Everything is physics and math.” Johnson has served on different panels and has heard from students who told her they decided to go into a STEM career after listening to her talk. She keeps in touch with NASA employees and will call on them, when needed, to help drive home the importance of STEM to audiences. At one recent event in North Carolina, Johnson mentioned to the students that she could get an astronaut to talk to them. The school hooked up her phone to the PA system, and they were able to have a conversation with astronaut Leland Melvin. In 2011, Johnson was honoured at the dedication of the Katherine G. Johnson Science Technology Institute at Alpha Academy in Fayetteville, N.C.

When asked if she still counts things, Johnson said, “Oh, yes. And things have to be parallel. I see a picture right now that’s not parallel, so I’m going to go straighten it. Things must be in order.” Geometry is still an important part of who she is, a fact evident as she began to talk about her father. She recalled him as “the tallest, straightest man in the area.” She loved her father a great deal, and he was a big influence in her life, teaching her many things. One lesson she has carried everywhere, taught to her own children, and let be a guide throughout her education, career and every other aspect of her life.

Katherine Johnson celebrated her 100th birthday on Aug. 26, 2018. She died on the 24^th February 2020 .

September 2020

World Space Week 4 to 10 October 2020

Theme for World Space Week 2020 will be “Satellites Improve Life”.

World Space Week 2020 –taking place from October 4th until October 10th – will be focusing its yearly theme on the impact of satellites in our daily lives.

More than sixty years after launching the first human-made satellite, there is no denying that this technology has impacted life for everyone on this planet. From monitoring weather patterns and climate change, to live broadcasting news and events, or simply locating your lost smartphone through GPS technology. One couldn’t imagine life without satellites anymore.

Satellites used to be big and expensive pieces of technology, but an interesting change has taken place in the past years. 10-centimeter (4 inch) cube-shaped satellites called cubesats often piggyback when bigger equipment is launched, thereby drastically reducing launch cost. It is not uncommon nowadays for schools and universities to launch their own cubesats for scientific and educational purposes.

Access to space has indeed come into reach of a broader public. On top of that, we see several private space companies launching their own mega-constellations of thousands of these smaller satellites. This certainly proves the continuing potential of satellite applications in the decades to come.

Observe Satellites During World Space Week 2020

There are safe and exciting ways to celebrate World Space Week, 4-10 October 2020 safety given the COVID-19 pandemic. One way is to observe satellites. This article describes how.

The WSW 2020 theme, Satellites Improve Life, encourages students and the public to learn about satellites and the many ways they improve life on Earth. A first step is to simply observe satellites from your backyard. If you can see stars from where you live, you can probably see some satellites.

Observing satellites is simple. After sunset when the sky is dark, go outside and turn off any outdoor lights. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness. Look at the stars. You can easily tell a satellite from a star because the satellite is moving slowly. Sometimes it may appear to blink because it is rotating. Satellites will move across the sky from horizon to horizon.

You can see satellites in the early evening because, although it is dark where you are standing, there is still sunlight above you in low-Earth orbit (LEO). You can see LEO satellites because they reflect light from the sun to your eyes. On a typical evening with dark skies, you can easily see several satellites. This technique also works just before dawn.

Once you and your children see a satellite, you may wonder which satellite am I seeing? There are several apps and websites that show which satellites can be seen based on your position and time.

The brightest satellite of all is the International Space Station (ISS). This massive orbiting laboratory is operated by the United States, Russia, European Space Agency, Japan, and Canada and is permanently crewed. You can use this web site to predict when you can see an overhead “pass” of ISS:

https://www.astroviewer.net/iss/en/observation.php

Telescopes and binoculars are not needed to observe satellites. In fact, the naked eye is necessary to identify satellites moving against the starry background.

The number of LEO satellites is increasing. Large satellites in very high (geostationary) orbit have been used for decades to relay TV and communications around the world. These include satellites built such companies as Lockheed Martin and operated by SES. Several companies such as SpaceX are launching many smaller satellite constellations into LEO to provide internet and other services to under-served regions of the Earth. Soon there may be thousands of such satellites in LEO, helping people around the world connect and stimulating the economies of developing nations.

Parents, take your children outside after sunset during World Space Week, October 4-10, to see real satellites improving lives above you in space! This will be exciting to children and stimulate their interest in space and technology.