ACTIVITIES 151
Student Robotics Competition
Sunday April 10th: fifteen teams, surrounded by an entourage, arrived at Southampton University Student’s Union for what would be a very exciting day. On the way to the final, all teams had a very difficult task: to build an autonomous robot that could navigate a maze and collect cans, all without any of the electronics kit being available until two weeks beforehand.
That Saturday had been an exhausting day for everyone involved, with much re-programming and testing going on for the best part of seven hours, all to try to produce a robot that could make it around a testing course during the competition.
Sunday dawned and tired eyes turned towards the arena for the first round.
Carnage ensued, with robots simply turning in circles or crashing into one another. Unfortunately for us, in the first two rounds we were immediately rammed into a wall and stopped, leaving us in joint last place.
In the third round, the QEH robot (a tank-catamaran hybrid) managed to turn the corner and earned us a well deserved point. However, the fourth round was the defining moment, as the QEH ‘bot started on its way, turned and ascended the ramp, collected the super-token and made it down again, earning us a thoroughly needed four points. Thus we were catapulted up to ninth place, where we remained for the rest of the afternoon.
In the knock-out competition, our entrant suffered a loss of grip at the start, turning sharply to the right and plunging straight into a wall at full speed, ending our run right there. But to have come ninth out of nineteen was a major achievement - four teams hadn’t even made it to the final - especially for a first year team.
And so for next year? We’re there and Southampton had better be ready!
Mike Beck
Literary Society
Whether it was discussing the ‘Lyrics of Bob Dylan’ with Mr Hamlett or an interactive workshop with Redland High School, this year Literary Society has blown its way onto the calendars of many eager students.
Until now, these evening musings were only for the brave few Sixth Formers wanting to enrich their experience beyond English lessons but with the new and improved content and speakers, the library raked in pupils from across the board. “Interesting and inspiring”, were the words used by one boy in Year 9 after witnessing the awesome power of Bob Dylan’s lyrics on our group.
We were never short of debate, either, with discussions on mainstream modern novels and a task to create a new, group original story. Puns were flying around the room when ideas for novels were bandied about, including one with a female protagonist who decides to have a sex change in order to gain more respect while playing golf. It would be fair to say that that evening was an eye opener for new ideas if nothing else.
Not content just with the pupils at QEH, the English Department enticed girls from Red Maids’ and Redland High School to join in with the various workshops. One that proved particularly useful was on Othello, a set text for half of the Upper Sixth. Bringing together the different ideas and thoughts from both male and female perspectives shone a new light upon the work for both schools.
For the future, we can only expect bigger and brighter things to come from these sessions.
Oliver Plunkett
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