Whilst most undergraduates are away playing (well okay, working) College's facilities are used for various other activities. Today and yesterday parts of College have been dedicated to the construction of wind turbines. "The Green Design Challenge" organised by staff and postgrads from the Mech Eng Department and sponsored by Shell Renewables was aimed to attract young women into engineering.
Teams of 6th form girls from across London were given the design brief; "you're on VSO in 'some third world country' and you've been asked to design a small wind turbine to power a small hospital fridge". Materials provided consisted of the standard mech eng design project diet of balsa wood, glue guns and some plastic sheets but extra points were given to those teams that used recycled (junk e.g. old umbrellas) material.
A variety of wind turbines were constructed including single bladed and dual bladed, horizontal axis and vertical axis, those that predominantly used lift and those that used drag, those that produce a lot of power in high wind speeds but are useless at low wind speed and those that can work at low wind speeds but are limited in their maximum power output. With marks being awarded for aesthetics, they were also painted in exciting colours including Friesian cow patterns (camouflage perhaps?). One of the highlights of the event however, was the visit to Jim Henderson's Creature Shop yesterday evening that included meeting that shining icon of childhood breakfasts, the Honey Monster.
Cynics will no doubt point out that this event is PR for both Shell and Imperial College. They are of course right. It is also true though that the girls visibly enjoyed themselves and many said gave them a clearer idea what engineering is about and that they found this helpful with respect to forming career ideas.
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