Engineering Day
Winning Team St Peter's
Towards the end of the Summer term we had the chance to be engineers for the day. In Group 16, St Peter’s, we were thinking of ways to save energy. Remembering the film Monsters Inc. gave me an idea – what if we could create energy from sound? We had already been told that the population of the world in 2050 would be reaching 10 billion, obviously creating more noise. Then I thought of another idea – as you can change a hoover from sucking to blowing, could you do the same to a speaker with sound? Instead of a speaker giving out sound, could it take it in instead? The group backed the idea of converting sound into energy and we started more detailed work on the design.
Someone came up with the internal design of the speaker, where a rubber diaphragm would move energy back and forth when the sound waves touched it. This energy would be passed down two cords into a storage/conversion box. The speakers themselves would be recycled old ones, which would cut down the cost of producing what we had named the “Silent Speaker”. We also added a sensor to the front so that any type of air vibrations would create energy.
We decided to place the silent speakers in noisy, crowded places like theme parks and stadiums, where the most amount of energy could be made. Once the design was complete we had to show it to the rest of St. Peter’s House and the judges. Out of St. Peter’s House. the silent speakers were chosen, and our overall score would be measured against the winners of the rest of the Houses.
The judges compared scores and…we won!