Hey Blog! A couple of weeks ago, I took part in the closing day for a project. I told you about the start of this project last year, so here is the sequel and conclusion!
In Midlands Makers (16th Oct. 2023), I told you about the Midlands Makers Challenge. “An initiative which has run for a few years now, with the aim of getting young people to think about climate (in)action and come up with solutions for problems,” I said it was, and it has certainly delivered. After the opening day at the old library last year, we interpreted the brief for ourselves and developed several ideas. By the time we had to whittle them down to just one, we had four good ones: Slope farms, where the water that ran down the hill was pumped back up and none was lost; Self-Cleaning windows, where rainwater washed the glass clean; Composting Astronaut toilets, where no water was used to flush; and water-saving toothbrushes, preventing you from wasting anything while you brush your teeth. The slope farms were good, but we didn’t know how to arrange them or where the energy would come from to pump the water. The toilets were funny, but didn’t get the required three votes, so we abandoned that idea. However, we thought the toothbrushes were relatable, fun, and useful, so we decided to go with them.
Next step – create a prototype. The mentors had left us a box of craft materials to make a model of our chosen design, so materials weren’t a problem. It turns out all you need to make a reasonable model of a toothbrush is two long tubes, some masking tape, a selection if straws, and some cardboard. Oh, and a pen, a screwdriver, a pair of scissors, a hacksaw, and a crazy gang of friends who spend as much time laughing as actually working! It looks quite good. We made two – one whole, to show the outside, and one cut away, to show the inside. What we used them for is slightly different, because of the next part of the brief.
Presentation. We had to write a presentation on what we had done over the course of the challenge; this included how we started the brief, our focuses, our design, any challenges we encountered, how our models worked and any plans we had for the future of our product. We didn’t have much time for rehearsals. By the time we’d chosen our final design, there were only three days to go, so we had to have an extra meet to decide what we were going to say. We were still practicing on the ground floor of the museum before going upstairs to the room! However, when we did it for real in front of the other teams it went perfectly. We had prepared a slide show as well, which was helpfully clicked through by Mum at the points needed. All in all, though we are still waiting for judging, I think it went very well and I’m glad I took part in the project!
