Over the past six months, two teams of Lower Sixth Physicists have been working on engineering projects with ARM Ltd., Cambridge-based semiconductor and software design specialists, and Arup, a multinational company whose work centres on built environments, to gain their Industrial Cadet Gold Award. Both teams have successfully designed software, built equipment, written reports and delivered their final presentations with each team member taking on a role within the business element of the project – be it finance, leadership or report writing – and a technological responsibility – such as coding, building, or data analysis. 

Rayan Gergees, Chloe Lugg, Tegan Macpherson, Mahika Nair and Yasmeen Siddiqui worked with ARM (Advanced RISC Machines) to produce ARTIE: The Artefact Preserving Robot. Focusing on objects from Classical Greece, the girls created a robot that could measure the temperature and humidity levels of its surroundings in order to help preserve museum artefacts. Their full report can be found here.

Jazzy Charap, Sophie Hudson, Amina Lahham, Amelia Mitford and Julie Perrier worked with Arup to produce a system to monitor air pollution and used their findings to suggest solutions to mitigate the effects of it. They approached the project brief by exploring the idea of sensors being used to measure particulate matter, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, temperature, air pressure and humidity, attaching this to a Raspberry Pi to read the data that the sensors managed to extrapolate. This was named FHSPD (Francis Holland School Pollution Detector) and their full report can be found here.

Congratulations to both teams of girls for producing such exciting and innovative projects, and thank you to ARM and Arup for all of their help and guidance!