In spite of a hectic term trying to co-ordinate the technical team and finalise the plans for the design of the 2011 car, our design director Tom still managed to find the time to do some outreach work. In November the Engineering Department here in Cambridge organised an event for families to build mini ”crazy-kit cars’, and Tom was on hand to plug CUER shamelessly tell them all about solar car racing and electric vehicles. The audience of budding engineers (projection much?) enjoyed his talk and enjoyed grilling him with some very tough questions even more. What a bonza bloke (as they say in the very small part of Australia that was actually accurately portrayed by Crocodile Dundee. Or possibly not).

Pupils at Stoke College were delighted to find Affinity on their playground when they arrived at school on Wednesday 22nd April. After a presentation in morning assembly years 6, 7 & 8 students were given a chance to build their own solar buggies. In the midday sunshine there followed a thrilling solar race, whilst the CUER team took advantage of the good weather to demonstrate Affinity in action.

Cambridge Precision joined us for the visit and the Haverhill Echo covered the story, which you can read here. For more photos take a look at our gallery (photos by Dan Rodgers).

- Emma

As part of Science Week the CUER outreach team visited three local schools last week, giving pupils the chance to see Affinity and build their own solar buggies. We were lucky with the weather and managed some seriously competitive solar buggy racing! Perse Prep School in Cambridge, St. Anne’s C of E Primary in Godmanchester and Thriplow C of E Primary School all gave us a very warm welcome and we had a great time answering hundreds of questions, from ‘How does it fly?’ to ‘Can you recommend any books on aerodynamics?’. Maybe we’ve inspired some of the engineers of the future!

- Emma

CUER students were delighted to be able to hold another series of Solar Buggy workshops yesterday for groups of school pupils visiting the University. Around 80 pupils participated in the events which were held at St Catharine’s College, and supported by the University’s 2009 Fund. The workshops allow pupils to design their own model solar car and encourage them to think about everything from aerodynamics to wheel size, in order to build the most efficient and ultimately the fastest car. Despite the less than ideal March sun, the teams’ impressive designs were surprisingly fast and we hope that all had fun whilst learning a little about solar power.

It is as yet uncertain whether the kids or the CUER lot had more fun with this! Certainly the competition between team members was fierce, and prompted the creation of the Outreach Cup, to be awarded at the end of the year to the team member with the most outreach wins.

Scandal abounded when one team member - Hannah who will remain unnamed – was discovered cheating by using TWO solar cells instead of the allotted one! Charges were later dropped (pun intended) when it was revealed that the…
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