The Big Bang Project Gallery

Upton Court Grammar School

“Act locally, think globally”

• Sustainability

We are creating a recycling scheme for schools and small-scale local areas. The mission is to encourage and incentivise regular people, especially young people, to adopt recycling as a habit in their everyday lives. Our planet needs our help, and recycling on a smaller scale is the simplest way to implement wider positive environmental change. This project, then, is to help prompt children, teenagers, and local communities to think more about what they can be doing for the Earth, and to show that even smaller actions like recycling your plastic water bottles or scrap paper can make a difference for the better! By influencing young people in this way, we can transform our communities, and eventually our society, into a place where everyone recycles where they can, a place where everyone thinks about the environment and cares to help make a change.

The health and state of the environment is something that affects all of us globally, but especially young people. As young people, now more than ever, we feel the need to do our part in helping the environment in whatever way we can. We wanted to create a project that would reach our peers and other young people, and encourage them to join us in rescuing our planet.

Ballymena Academy

A.R.K.

• Environment
• Sustainability
• Other

Our project is A.R.K., or Automated Robotic Kerbie. It is a robotic arm which is capable of automatically sorting recycling. It can also move your recycling to the front of your house for it to be collected whenever it is required. We did this as we feel many people would benefit from not being required to recycle, but we particularly ensured that the physically disabled and visually impaired would benefit as they can greatly struggle with recycling.

We came together as a team to work on a project as we are all fascinated with STEM. We were tasked with coming up with a piece of technology that would improve the environment, which led to us conceptualising A.R.K. Once we realised how fun it was working on this project, we decided to take it further and began prototyping physical models. Now we work together as a team continuously improving our robot and having fun at the same time!

King's College London Maths School

AutoMate: the chess board for everyone

• Education
• Mental health
• Other

AutoMate aims to create an accessible platform on which anyone can experience the magic of over the board chess. We wanted to create a chess board with integrated mechatronic systems allowing the user to avoid moving pieces themselves, but instead inputting moves through inclusive technologies, such as voice recognition and eye-gaze tracking. AutoMate can also be used as an educational tool to improve your chess ability as it gives you the ability to play one on one over the board chess with a computer of almost any difficulty level.

Our project aims to provide the over-the-board chess experience to people with motor disabilities, such as arthritis and cerebral palsy, or movement impairing injuries. We feel it is crucial that everyone has access to the benefits of learning and playing chess, especially in the social setting of over the board chess. A secondary aim of our project is to help train both amateur and advanced level players by giving them a training tool always available to them and which can develop skills such as board visualization, only obtainable through over the board play. Finally, our project aims to connect chess players who may want to play but are hindered by their location.

Lighthouse School Leeds

Automatic biscuit dunker

• Digital technology
• Food
• Other

The aim of the project is to automatically dunk biscuits - it will make it easier for me because I don't have to dunk my biscuit into my tea, the machine will do it for me!

The student invented and made an automatic biscuit dunker. The project won the first CREST silver award for our school and has been featured in the Yorkshire post twice, on ITV calendar and on Leeds TV. The machine allows you to decide the amount of time, depth and no of dunks for your biscuit allowing for a perfect dunk every time!

Petroc

Automatic irrigation system

• Conservation
• Humanitarian
• Sustainability

We decided to design an automatic drip irrigation system for farms in developing countries subject to floods and droughts. To come up with our project idea, we first brainstormed topics we were interested in: engineering, geography and biology; we were particularly interested in agriculture and the issues it is faced today. Looking at current issues in food security and water management, we settled on the idea of producing an improved design of an automatic drip irrigation system to improve farmers yield, food security, water management and quality of life in developing countries. We have looked at previous systems and where they have gone wrong in the hope that our system, if installed, would be effective and have a limited number of weaknesses. We are super proud of our project!

Thomas Telford University Technical College

Black hole prevention

• Space exploration

This could lead us to finding Scientific discoveries in quantum physics even, learning on how an atom reacts to the aftermath of a black hole and even using it for self-prevention against other natural disasters.

WMG Academy for Young Engineers (Solihull)

Butler robot to help the elderly

• Health & medicine
• Humanitarian
• Other

My Butler Robot called Pepper is designed to help people with mobility, independence and reduce dementia. Pepper can be programmed to map out a patient's home to avoid bumping into things and can deliver patients medicines, call emergency and aid with mobility exercises. My Robot will also play videos and songs for people to jog their memories and can pass items and medicines for patients to take. Pepper will reduce the need to take up hospital beds unnecessarily and give independence and freedom to people who want to remain home.

Southend High School for Girls

Earthquake resistant-trees

• Future cities and societies
• Humanitarian

This project explores how the tallest trees in the world, Giant Sequoia Trees, could inspire a design for earthquake-resistant buildings. The tree's features such as its shallow, wide, intertwining roots could be applied to buildings. The idea of earthquake-repelling buildings is also explored.

I wanted to know why trees made of wood were so good at standing up for sometimes thousands of years but our buildings made of cement and metal may fall down in eathquakes.

Uffculme School

Ecobot rc seed planting

• Environment
• Food
• Sustainability

We have created a protype 'ecobot' that plants seeds by remote control.

We wanted to design a system for remotely planting seeds. We throught it could help people who have difficulty with planting or want to plant on difficult terrain. We have created and programmed a prototype vehicle that operates by remote control and we 3-D printed models of a seed hopper, seed drill and casing that could be fitted to the vehicle. The idea is that the drill punches down under the vehicle and then the seed is dropped in - the vehicle rakes over the seed as it moves forward. We also thought that the design could be extended to planting tree saplings by GPS rather than remote control and help reduce global warming.

New College Pontefract

Effects of texture on aerodynamics

• Energy
• Sustainability
• Transportation

Assessing the effects of a surface, of an aerodynamic body on its efficiency and the applications to sustainable development.

I saw a YouTube video on how Bugatti had applied active aero to its new track car; dimples that popped up at high speeds. This led me to think about what other things could use this sort of technology to reduce drag, as this would make them more efficient so less energy is wasted overcoming air resistance.

Northfleet Technology College

Getting Down to Beesness

• Climate change
• Digital technology
• Education

As we developed the site, we explored the idea of whether our nature Reserve would be able to support one or more beehives. We have the space and fauna to support this. Being focused on sustainability issues, our Reserve elements must be as self-sustaining as possible whilst contributing positively to repairing the climate. To ensure that the message reaches as far as possible, it was decided that we would begin with a single hive then grow our apiary through partnering with our other schools in this endeavour. Applying an Ethical Entrepreneurship approach, partner schools will share the management and harvesting of the hives, splitting the proceeds to be used in further climate focused activities. Bee technology has developed using the power of the Internet of Things. Incorporating this into our apiary will ensure that our students and those in partner schools will closely monitor hive activity even though remote.

Our school benefits from a 4 acre nature reserve. During 2022 we were awarded a development grant to monitor the fauna and flora in the area. This developed into an Eco Leaders group being established, currently more than 30 students and growing. The group are core to the work in the reserve: installing a water collection system, WIFI, wildlife cameras and solar powered system. The group are key to the collection of information published via the reserve’s website. Encouraging biodiversity, the students have planted several hundred trees after a successful bid to a charity. The area was designated as ideal for a beehive. This decision is partially based on the environmental data collected in 2022. The ground is now, literally, prepared for the raising of bees to extend the climate repair and control element. Each hive will pollinate thousands of trees and other plants thereby continuing the circle of life.

Colchester County High School for Girls

Intersign

• Digital technology
• Future cities and societies
• Other

My project is a translation device with a twist; it can recognise sign language, not just speech and text. Think of Google translate, except it works with English, British Sign Language (BSL), images, speech, audio, and text. One way it works is that somebody signs a word to the device and then the device repeats the word's meaning back to you and prints out the meaning on the screen. The device also has an additional accessibility feature, which works like an Alexa. Someone signs/speaks a word which means something specific to the device and the device will do the job associated with that word. For example, signing help; could cause the device to call emergency services or family.

We wanted to know how to sign because it seemed like a fun, unique skill to learn and didn't think it would evolve into anything more. When we heard about this competition from our teacher, we took an interest into it and thought that using BSL for the project would be a great idea; it also helped that I enjoy computer science and coding so had the motivation to build a device like this -I also had a lot of fun researching and designing and learnt a lot of new things too.

Invicta Grammar School

Lung cancer: treatments and impacts

• Health & medicine

The title of my project is treatments for lung cancer and the effects it has on the body. My project looks at the actual meaning of cancer, and 3 popular treatments used to treat lung cancer (chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and cancer surgery. I have explained what the treatments are, the positives and negatives, and evaluated how effective they are. In my conclusion, I have decided which treatment is the most effective and why. My decision is based on the research and data I have collected during the course of my project.

King’s Leadership Academy Hawthornes

Neon coloured wheels

• Future cities and societies
• Transportation

I am proposing neon-coloured painted wheels - that the driver can use- that glow in the night so that they can be spotted easily when crossing the road. The concept for my neon-coloured wheels invention is that the wheels will glow in the dark and be colourful rather than black or grey, this will make them more visible and reduce injuries and deaths significantly. The wheels will be sprayed with waterproof durable, neon paint to create a vibrant effect. With this, children, young adults, and drivers will have less worry about safely crossing the road without injuries.

In the winter it tends to get dark and young people generally don't watch the road as they get distracted easily. This puts them at great risk of serious injuries or possible death on account of unnoticeable vehicles due to the lack of visibility. Some places, for example, the countryside, may have a shortage of streetlights which makes it almost impossible to spot someone if a light source is not present. It is said, that there have been 1,599 deaths and 7,649 injuries in the last five years as a consequence of unlit roads. Therefore, we need a system of some sort to stop putting young lives at risk.

Neuronauts

Space4Change

• Health & medicine
• Space exploration

Our idea was to make research in space more accessible. We therefore designed a space station that would make science in space easier for astronauts with visual impairments. Our model station, called 'Space4change', is built from acrylic, cardboard and fabric. It includes a Radio Frequency Identification system for voice-based-navigation within the station. We included calculations to implement artificial gravity in the station, which would require the facility to rotate in space. Furthermore, we envision the station having both a garden and a gym in order to limit detrimental effects of long space missions on the scientists aboard.

We are a large team of students, and therefore we had many different ideas and interests. Some of us were interested in using technology for making the world more accessible to the visually impaired - specifically, we started from text-to-braille converters and how to program them. Another team started from water storage and filtration over long times, and from there got interested in living in space... from there, we were only one long discussion away from building a space station for the visually impaired astronaut! Many of the initial features changed throughout or project, but the idea of combining living in space with accessibility for differently abled bodies is still at the core of our project.

Settlebeck School

The pupil power playground

• Energy
• Health & medicine
• Sustainability

As we struggle to meet the costs of energy used by school without as increase in funding pupils we have been looking at ways to generate our own power. We will build a playground which uses bikes, roundabouts and human powered hamster wheels to create power with dynamos which can be saved in batteries and used when needed. PE lessons and break times can be used to exercise and power school.

We are one of the UK's smallest secondary schools, we are in a rural area, and would love to be able to do our bit to help the environment. We also love exercise and being outdoors. This project covers all our favourite things. We wanted to create something that would solve a serious problem whilst being engaging to pupils.

Heolddu Comprehensive School

Therapy garden

• Environment
• Materials & textiles
• Mental health

Our project is designed to help with mental health and well being in a fun approach that we hope can be adopted in schools. We want pupils to design and build their own eco friendly garden and in doing so create a safe space that can help reduce anxiety and give a sense of achievement to pupils as well as encouraging them to be outdoors.

We were concerned about the rising levels of stress and anixety felt by pupils that was also affecting pupils attendance and therefore their grades. We wanted to try and do something that would encourage pupils to get involved and work together. We found that being outdoors helps with stress so we designed a project around this.

Avanti Fields School

Tree.O2

• Climate change
• Conservation
• Environment

Tree.02 takes in carbon dioxide and separates the carbon monoxide with the oxygen, then stores the carbon monoxide in the black metal outline. Tree.02 should then release the oxygen through the transparent glass, which can should be durable, but is thin enough for the carbon dioxide and oxygen to diffuse in and out of. If anyone dislikes the appearance of Tree.02, they can easily put up flowers or vines on top of Tree.02 which could make it aesthetically pleasing to all. Tree.02 has metal roots underground which helps it stay put and withstand harsh winds, this ensures it can do its job, whatever the weather!

We thought about how something could positively impact the environment and wellbeing of living things. Next, we came up with problems that badly affected the world and we found one of the biggest problems to be deforestation. Without trees, carbon dioxide that we produce would overpower oxygen, there would be little trees to photosynthesise. By inventing and hopefully in the future, producing Tree.O2, we could increase the amount of oxygen in the air, and do this quicker than a tree would. For example, if Tree.O2 could photosynthesise like a peepal tree could, it would release the most amount of oxygen possible and convert at night as well-but quicker. If we managed to replicate algae from the ocean (which is a carbon sink), carbon dioxide would be absorbed and a lot more oxygen would be released.

St Matthew's RC High School

Using mobility to generate electricity

• Energy

We have noticed that there is a rise in energy prices therefore we want to find ways to use our school environment to generate electricity. We brainstormed a number of ideas and have chosen to move forward with pressure plate that transfers kinetic energy store to electro-static store. We will conduct a pilot study to test the viability of our project before implementing it on a larger scale.

We thought about basic mechanics that would help us generate electricity. We ended up with the idea of pressure plates, knowing that every step a person takes on average transfers 4 watts of power. Though this number itself is not a large quantity, the number of steps that are done in a school is. We chose to work on this as it seems to be an eco-friendly alternative to purely use electricity generated from the National Grid. We thought of using Pavegen's pressure plates as inspiration it works by turning kinetic energy from footsteps into electricity. Adjustments would be made in the material, making it mostly using recycled plastics with metal parts if necessary. The use of the pressure plates would negate the increase in energy prices, and if the project is successful, it could be used in our local community to make them more eco-friendly and save money.

Shawlands Academy

Using technology to clean plastic from the ocean

• Sustainability

FS-2023 - We have made a robot that finds and collects trash in the ocean. Our robot is very unique to others as we have thought of multiple problems, here are some of its details. It has an infra red sensor to tell the difference from life and trash. It swims into the trash and collects the trash with its mouth open. From there, the trash is put into an compressor where and FTIR scanner scans the trash and sees if it’s got plastic in it. If it finds traces of non plastic, like a dead animal, the gills will take it out. Then the trash is compressed in its bag with all the water going out of the gills. It has a small compartment that has 5 beacons in if it finds large amounts of trash that won’t go in the trash storage. The entire robot is solar powered and is fully capable of running on its own. It even knows where the coastal checkpoints are that it drops off full bags of trash and refills on solar power which it would get by charging during the day. The entire robot is made out of aluminium so it’s incredibly lightweight. Overall, the FS-2023 robot is capable of handling trash throughout all of the oceans.

We do not like how plastic is affecting the seaside and the ecosystem. This means that animals will go extinct and there is less food for the animals in the sea because they also eat the plastic . We wanted to find a way to reduce this impact .

St Teilo's C.I.W. High School

Waste food into biomass boiler pellets

• Energy
• Environment
• Food

We found waste food and dried it in a carbon neutral solar dehydrator. We burned this food to release energy and considered what we could then power with that energy.

We wanted to see if waste food from the canteen could be burned as pellets in our biomass boiler. We made a solar dehydrator to dry the food. This worked really well and was carbon neutral. We then burned it to estimate the energy content. This is of great interest to us as we are keen to find ways to save money for the school and reduce energy consumption.

St Aidan's High School

Healthy Minds Calmify

• Digital technology
• Health & medicine
• Mental health

We came together as a team to represent our school, St Aidan’s in Wishaw, in the Industrial Cadet Awards. We were given a choice of four different briefs to create our project from. We all felt that we were advocates for promoting positive mental health and well-being, so we selected the “Health Minds” brief. Over a period of 12 weeks, we worked continuously to research, create and analyse surveys, design and develop our app, and also present our findings. We developed many skills over this period including teamwork, communication, digital literacy, designing, project management, time management and much more. We are incredibly proud of the steps we have taken so far to develop our app, Calmify, especially that we have created a prototype version of the app using PowerApps.

St Mary's College, Londonderry

Natural sunscreen preparations

• Health & medicine

This project came about after seeing articles in the media concerning inorganic chemicals in sunscreens which had entered the water systems by way of people swimming in the sea and pools or showering and bathing and were causing harm to marine life such as coral and other organic chemicals that could be absorbed through the skin into the body and cause harm to health. I decided to investigate and develop a range of sunscreens that were less harmful and made from natural organic and sustainable ingredients. Based on background research, I used a range of easily obtainable natural oils. I designed and made my own apparatus for testing the oils and the sunscreens that I formulated.

King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys

Eco friendly drone

• Climate change
• Environment
• Transportation

We didn't have an engineering society at our school for a few years following COVID, so we decided to create a new one. To launch this society, we immediately thought of the Big Bang Competition as an excellent way to get people involved with engineering, problem solving and teamwork. We were able to develop our analysis skills in searching for a problem to tackle, our problem solving skills to figure out how to technically implement our idea and our cooperation with one another throughout this entire endeavour. This has not only allowed us to start a new society in school and inspire younger years but also tackle the wider impact COVID19 has had on the environment.

Corbridge Middle School

How can we stop our homes from flooding?

• Climate change
• Environment
• Future cities and societies

We are the Weather and Climate Club from Corbridge Middle School and, over the past 4 years, we have had the most incredible adventure! We started by using our weather station to collect data as part of a citizen science programme with Newcastle University. We then became concerned by local flooding from severe weather events so we learned about sustainable urban drainage. Then we built a model to show how SUDS work - then we took the model (including the storm-simulator watering cans) to the Royal Society Summer exhibition to tell thousands of other people about climate change and how SUDS can solve one of the issues it will cause. During our project we have talked to professors, fellows of the Royal Society, film crews and we even had a visit from a BBC Weather Forecaster. From citizen science, hands-on investiagtions and science communication, it's been STEMtastic!

Mayfield Grammar School, Gravesend

BIO-clean H20

• Energy
• Sustainability
• Water

My mother grew up in a rural village in Africa in which she couldnt get clean water regularly. I wanted to find a way to combat this in the communites that still face this problem in today's society.

Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet

EasyLift- Mobility Aid for the Elderly

• Future cities and societies
• Health & medicine

I originally looked to create a product which would improve the lifestyle of the elderly. When I realised the large gap in the market, and the problems taht current mobility aids create, I looked to design a better walking stick, to aid the elderly with movement and standing up. Through the iterative design process and multiple client consultations, I ended up with my final product: EasyLift.

Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School

Brown dwarfs within binary systems

• Space exploration

As part of my Nuffield Research Project in Astrophysics, I investigated 150 brown dwarfs using astronomical mass surveys in order to find cool brown dwarfs that are part of binary systems!

Foyle College

What 2 Wear Sustainable Fashion App

• Digital technology
• Environment
• Sustainability

I am a student in Northern Ireland with a passion for fashion! We are always being encouraged to look after the environment and I wanted to think of how I could link sustainability and fashion together. My room (like many other teenagers) can be messy as I have a lot of clothes but I am always thinking I have nothing to wear. I know a lot of people of all ages think the same. I wanted to research and develop an app that used artifical intelligence to organise my wardrobe and also point to other ways in which my fashion choices could be more sustainable like selling, swapping or renting from friends and family other others as well as selling clothes that I no longer needed. In 2023 we should be thinking of our choices and sustainability to look after the environment and my app addresses this problem.

New College Pontefract

Feasibility of Reintroductions in the UK

• Climate change
• Conservation
• Environment

I have an interest in ecology and conservation, and wanted to research how we can help to reinstate our lost biodiversity in the UK.