COMMERCE COMES TO COOMBE HILL!

Ninety year 6 children from Coombe Hill Junior School in Kingston-upon-Thames took part in a SATRO Junior Business Game on 23rd January. They were divided into mixed ability and friendship groups to emulate the real working world.

Judging from the pupil's feedback, they had a superb day which definitely opened their eyes to the world of business. And, how important teamwork and communication are in an effective organisation...

"I learnt how to work in a team a lot better, how to speak more confidently and last but not least, I loved it! It was really fun."

"I learnt that there is no need to work with friends, if you really try then you can work with anyone. I even learned how a job works and that it's really hard to earn money. Now I know what my dad goes through every day! Today has been a fun and exciting lesson and I would love to do this again one day."

Siemens ‘Next Big Thing’ Company Challenge

Teams from 13 schools will be descending on Siemens offices in Frimley on 24 September. There they will meet their Siemens mentors and learn what they will be working on together over the coming months. It is up to individual teams how they use their mentors but most will have 3-4 meetings as well as interim contact.

The challenge is free to enter and for students in Key Stages 4 and 5. Students learn about the working world and how STEM can be applied to real-life problems. If your school missed out this year but want to know more about next year, contact us now via julia@satro.org.uk - don’t leave it too late!

USING MATHS IN THE REAL WORLD!

Numeracy Day – Lingfield Park Racecourse

45 students from The Winston Churchill, Ash Manor Schools and Collingwood College were busy yesterday at Lingfield Park, seeing how maths is used in the real world. In this case, a racecourse on a raceday. Ex-jockey Olly McPhail showed them the weighing room, parade ring and jumps, as well as entertaining them with stories from when he raced.

TO THE STARS... AND BEYOND!

Europe has launched the Gaia satellite - one of the most ambitious space missions in history.

Gaia aims to map the precise positions and distances to more than a billion stars. The satellite's remarkable sensitivity will reveal a colossal number of previously unseen objects, including new planets beyond our solar system, asteroids, comets, cold dead stars and even tepid stars that never quite fired into life. Gaia is currently travelling to an observing station situated some 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth, the journey taking over a month to complete. The satellite will compile profiles on each star that it will encounter, working out how far from Earth they are and will even study their motion across the sky! Other properties such as temperature, brightness and composition can be recorded, making it possible to then calculate the ages of the stars and for about 150 million of these stars, Gaia will calculate their velocity either towards or away from Earth. This will then enable scientists to use these stars as three-dimensional markers to trace the evolution of The Milky Way. Scientists may then be able to predict what the Milky Way may look like in the future and also how it was assembled in the past.

Click here for more information

SATROClub Competition

We are looking for a logo for SATRO Club – could you design one for us?

Design specification

-Logo which links to the one used by SATRO

-Use no more than two colours

-Aimed at young people aged 13-19

-Easily reproduced and used in a variety of situations eg website, written material, banner stand

-Brand values: friendly, inviting, informative, contemporary

-Image produced in high resolution JPEG

Send your designs to contactus@satro.org.uk

PLASTIC ELECTRONICS - PUSHING THE POTENTIAL

Kate Stone showcases her passions for printing and electronics at the TED@Amsterdam conference. She shows how she has managed to incorporate both with innovative products that combine printing and digital electronics. Kate is the Founder and Managing Director of Novalia, a company that specialises in interactive printing.

The team at Novalia have also released a project to create a poster, with a printed smart-phone-like touch capacity. The user simply touches the poster and hears the sounds. The project offers two different versions; the first connects via Bluetooth to an app running on a smart-phone or tablet and plays the sounds wirelessly through the device. The second is a standalone version that plays the sounds straight out of the poster. Imagine sampling a song from a new album from your favourite band from their poster, downloading information about a new product to your phone from the touch of a shop display or a printed advert with a build-in social media sharing button - the possibilities are endless!

Click here to view video.

BECOME A CONSERVATION HERO - COMPETITION

Voices of Conservation are on a search to find 6 talented young conservationists from the UK to save the rhino and win a journey of a lifetime to South Africa in August 2014.

To enter, you must form a team of 2-6 people and submit a 2 minute video discussing and presenting your ideas on solutions to rhino poaching in South Africa. Voices of Conservation are looking for a dynamic team, passionate about conservation, who will take this opportunity to make a real difference to the future of the rhino.

The competition is open to 16-19 year olds (Age on 1st August 2014) The deadline for entries has been extended to 21st March 2013 due to popular demand.

Click here for more details.

ELECTRIC DREAMS

If you enjoy practical work and are good at solving problems then being an electrician could be a great career path for you. As an electrician you would fit and repair electrical circuits and wiring. This would be in people’s homes or businesses.You could be working in all kinds of buildings, including homes, offices, shops and sports stadiums. You may also supervise other people in a team. Electricians need to have industry recognised qualifications at level 3. The normal route into this area of work is via an apprenticeship.

Click here for careers advice and more details about becoming an electrician.

365 DAYS: THE YEAR IN SCIENCE

'From the US shutdown to breakthroughs in stem-cell therapies, the past 12 months have seen fluctuating fortunes for science.'

Nature, the international weekly journal for science, have composed an article reviewing the major scientific breakthroughs and events during 2013. Huge leaps were made in stem-cell therapies, space exploration hit a whole new level and cash was poured into investigations of the human brain. Here, captured in a few sentences, is everything you need to know about what mattered in science in 2013.

Click here to view article

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM SATRO! - SCIENCE HISTORY

300 years ago, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, a physicist, engineer and glass blower invented the mercury-in-glass thermometer.
The mercury thermometer consists of a bulb containing mercury attached to a narrow glass tube, the volume of the mercury is much less than the volume of the bulb. The volume of mercury changes slightly when placed in different temperatures, the small change in volume causes the mercury to travel a relatively long way up the tube. The space above the mercury may be filled with nitrogen or it may be at less than atmospheric pressure, a partial vacuum. In order to calibrate the thermometer, the bulb is made to reach thermal equilibrium with a temperature standard such as an ice/water mixture, and then with another standard such as water/vapour, and the tube is divided into regular intervals between the fixed points.
Fundamentally, thermometers made of different materials (e.g., coloured alcohol thermometers) might be expected to give different average readings due to different expansion properties. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit also developed the temperature scale now named after him; farenheit.

Click here for more information

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM SATRO! - SCIENCE HISTORY

On this date, January 1st, over 200 years ago in 1801, Asteroid Ceres was discovered. The first asteroid was discovered by Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, though it was classified as a planet at the time. He named his discovery Ceres after the Roman goddess of the harvest and motherly love. The asteroid was discovered to conform with the Titus-Bode law that suggested a planet should appear between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It is the largest body containing about one third of the mass of the asteroid belt that was discovered soon after. Ceres is the largest asteroid and only dwarf planet in the inner solar system. It has a rock-ice body and measures 950km in diameter, the smallest identified dwarf planet.

Image: Ceres (bottom left), the Moon and Earth shown to scale.

Click here for more information on Asteroid Ceres