Year 12 Farnborough Hill School pupils Laura Bailey, Freya Buchan and Molly Fryatt have earned silver Crest Awards from the British Science Association for their project to design a teaching demo using a 3M product.

The students are all budding engineers and their enthusiasm following a tour of 3M’s laboratories and Customer Innovation Centre (CIC) led to an invitation to work on a project of their choice and present it to a panel of 3Mers.

Technical manager Sarah Chapman said: “The girls chose to design a demo of 3M™ VHB™ pull tape that could be used by STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Ambassadors in schools.

“They used the clamps and weights found in a typical school lab to create the demo to test VHB against a competitive tape. They worked with a number of 3M engineers and technical experts to develop and test their prototype and hardware development engineer, Sabeel Ullah, helped the girls 3D print the 3M shapes used in the demo.”

In preparation for the presentation, the students carried out a risk assessment and created a set of PowerPoint slides as well as a worksheet and instructions for STEM Ambassadors using the demo.

In addition to 3Mers Claire Donoghue, Neale Griffiths and Sarah, the panel included Emily Thorpe-Smith, STEM resources manager from the Winchester Science Centre, and teachers from Farnborough Hill School.

Said Sarah: “The working prototype the girls developed was incredible and they gave a very impressive presentation. During their week in Bracknell, they made a number of connections with 3Mers who helped guide them through all the stages of the project.”

Speaking during the presentation, Molly said: “As well as learning to use new equipment, we had the chance to find out more about different types of engineering roles and understand how these are applied in industry. It was great to get real hands-on experience and have a chance to use our own problem solving skills.”

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