On the 1st of July, YSJ Founder Christina Astin, YSJ Chief Editor Claire Nicholson and YSJ team members Michael Hofmann, Abbie Wilson, Cormac Larkin and Peter He, attended the Shell Make The Future London festival in the Queen Elizabeth Park, London. This was not only an opportunity for us to see this amazing festival but it was also a rare opportunity for us all to meet face-to-face and share our exciting ideas for the coming months!
The festival encouraged young people to consider how we can power our cities in the future – Shell even ran a competition for school pupils aged 11-14, enabling them to apply their STEM knowledge to the problem. YSJ Founder, Christina Astin, was on the judging panel for this incredible ‘Bright Ideas Challenge’, so she had some very tough decisions to make! The deserving winners were Team ‘Algae to Power’ from Queen Elizabeth’s School whose idea was to place algae on top of buildings in order to convert biomass into fuel for hydrogen cars! Huge congratulations to all of the regional winners! We hope that the winners will consider submitting their work for publication with us.
The winners were also very excited to meet Rachel Riley, presenter and TV personality! It was great to see so many people interested in the amazing STEM work being undertaken by
young people!
We also got to see the launch of this year’s Shell Eco Marathon where over 200 teams from all over the world submitted their car designs & prototypes to see which car could travel the furthest on 1 Litre of fuel! The world record for this event was 3,771km/L – that’s the equivalent of from London to Rome! Before competing, the cars had to undergo rigorous testing; if they failed, they were not allowed to compete and those students may have failed that section of their university course… no pressure! The competition was kicked off by a fantastic wind band then a procession of cars and flagbearers for the 22 competing countries. This year, the winners wereteam BUMI Siliwangi from Indonesia who won a technology training week with Ferrari in Italy for their fantastic work! The complex engineering and design of the vehicles amazed us!
Overall, we had a science-filled day which really showcased the contribution that young people can make to STEM! If you also have great ideas or research skills, why not submit an article for publication in YSJ?