The Bright Ideas Challenge: What will cities look like in 2050? How will they be powered to be vibrant, healthy and clean places to live? That’s the question Shell have put to students across the country in their Bright Ideas Challenge. As a department we have had our Year 7 and 8 students working to design their own solutions that could power cities of the future. Due to the high calibre of entries submitted by our students we have decided as a department to pick a winning group per class, who will be shared on the school’s social media accounts next week. A final overall winning group will be entered into the National Bright Ideas Challenge on behalf of the entire school with a chance of winning up to £10,000 for the school, high-tech goodie bags and action-packed educational experiences.

The winning idea for our in-school portion of the competition belongs to class 7MI /IT. “Our turbine will go in a sewage pipe, and every time waste water is run, it will flow through the turbine. As the waste water flows by, the turbine spins around. The turbine converts the energy of the flowing waste water into mechanical energy. The mechanical energy is then converted into electricity by the hydroelectric generator that is attached to the turbine.” This energy would then be shared across local areas. Not only did they research and design their innovative idea, pupils also created a prototype to support their idea. This idea would not only work in the UK, but could be developed for countries with less access to electricity or historical areas that cannot have more modern methods of harnessing green energy, such as solar panels.

Please join us as we wish the pupils good luck with their inventive idea as we wait for the outcome of the Bright Ideas Challenge 2021. For more details of Shell’s Bright Ideas Challenge please visit: www.shell.co.uk and search for “Bright Ideas Challenge”.