Photos and video: student hovercrafts race each other at the Mid Sussex STEM Challenge

The event took place on Friday, June 28, at Borde Hill House and Gardens and saw the students show off their hovercrafts, which they had to design and build.

They were joined by a real-life hovercraft in the grounds, which put on an impressive demonstration, thanks to the British Hovercraft Company.

The High Sheriff of West Sussex Mrs Philippa Gogarty welcomed everyone to the event at 9.30am.

She said: “It is an utter delight to be here this morning.”

She continued: “STEM is so important and I say that as an English graduate. Science is not my background but it is my business. I launched a business with my business partner back in 2004 when our children were young and they had jumped on the first three-wheeled scooters.

Mrs Gogarty said it was a ‘miracle moment’ when an engineer decided to put two wheels at the front of a children’s scooter and one at the back. She said this allowed youngsters to ‘surf the pavements’ instead of coming to a ‘colliding halt’.

She added: “Today we’ve sold more than a million scooters to children up and down the country.”

Nick Green from Flowserve thanked Borde Hill for hosting the event and the people who set up the hovercraft track. He said: “Most of all thank you to everybody who’s turned up today, particularly the students for all the work you’ve put in over the past few months to get where you are today.”

A275 – 82-year-old cyclist seriously injured

The Mid Sussex STEM Challenge for students this year was to research, develop and build a hovercraft that would be able to glide across the ground and carry ‘cargo’ while manoeuevring towards its destination. The teams had to design and assemble a vehicle to a required specification that could complete an obstacle course via remote navigation as many times as possible in an allotted time. Students had a ton of fun racing the vehicles around a track in two exciting heats.

After the judges’ final assessments, The Deputy Lord Lieutenant of West Sussex, Sir Richard Kleinwort, awarded the four trophies and was was joined by Professor Winfried Hensinger of Universal Quantum.

The winners were: The Engineering Award – St Paul’s Catholic College, Overall Presentation – Chailey School, Race Challenge – team B of Oathall Community College, and Overall Winner – Warden Park.

The Deputy Lord Lieutenant of West Sussex called the STEM Challenge a great initiative for students. He told this newspaper: “Since the launch in October it has taken over their lives insofar as it can do in a very busy curriculum. But the result you see here is huge teamwork, great ingenuity, creativity and creating a design of their own which we can see the result of.

He said: “This is all about creating interest in the STEM subjects and, of course, hopefully producing a great engineer or two for this country in the future.”

Professor Hensinger praised the creativity on display and encouraged the students to aim high.

He told this newspaper: “The students did a lot of problem solving and they had a lot of different ways to solve these problems. The reason why I like this challenge so much is it’s very authentic to what we do in research. When we build quantum computers there are tons of really hard challenges and we have to somehow overcome them in a very similar way as these students did.”

He added that it was wonderful to see the end result of what was many students’ first experience in research.

The Haywards Heath Town Team said many engineering and medical companies joined forces for this year’s event to highlight the diverse and successful careers students could have by continuing with science, technology, engineering and maths subjects. Each of the companies provided a STEM Ambassador to work with a school and show them real world workplaces. Students also prepared a Marketing and Business Management Plan with help from Nuffield Health. The companies involved included: Flowserve, PSM Marine Engineering, Adelphi, Nuffield Hospital, Bike Smart, Edwards Vacuum, Quantum Technologies and Balfour Beatty.