The name of West Lakes Academy is already earning respect even before it formally opens in September. At the Rotary Club's Technology Tournament, which was recently held at the Lakes College, Workington, it was represented by combined teams from Ehenside and Wyndham, the two schools which it will replace. Their team, which consisted of Sam Terry and Jamie Martin, from Wyndham, and Megan Troughton and Jessica Smith, from Ehenside, won the Cup for the Intermediate Challenge of the Competition year 11 students, by meeting a challenge to build a bridge that could hold a 1kg weight and include a working drawbridge.
Jamie Martin reports that the only materials that were issued to the team were paper straws, card, cotton wooden wheels, wooden doweling, glue gun, sellotape, scissors and a wooden base to build the bridge on.
"The time that we had to build and design a portfolio which was to consist of designs, structural ideas and brainstorms on the project was 5 - 6 hrs only," he explains. "In real life the straws used would represent the steel girders and supports/structure of the bridge, the cotton would represent the wire to strengthen the bridge and to lift part of it and the card would represent the tarmac road. The winning bridge structure was built by using a sequence of triangles that the team had tested earlier on and had found out they were the strongest way to build the structure. The team used the glue gun to secure all of this together. The bridge was made in three stages. The main bridge, the part that was to be lifted, and the towers for the mechanism to provide leverage for a good lift all worked successfully."
One of the Year 9 teams which included Eoin Groat, Eilish Lightfoot, Daniel Shaw (from Wyndham) and Stuart Graham (from Ehenside) won 2nd Place in the Basic Challenge.