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Women in Engineering- Times of Change

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Sarah Barrington

This is the second in a series of posts by some of the women in CUER, writing about how they came to study engineering, what their experiences have been and how we can encourage more girls to pursue science, engineering, technology and maths. These posts were inspired by the amazing reception we had at the High Performance Antenna Live festival at the Science Museum on International Women’s Day.

Part 1

Whenever my friends or colleagues ask me, so what exactly is engineering? Even I struggle to answer.

Yes, the Oxford Dictionary defines it as ‘the branch of science and technology concerned with the design, building, and use of engines, machines, and structures’, but what does this tell us of the massive impact engineers have on pretty much everything in our everyday lives? The hard work and meticulous calculation they implement in order to better society as a whole?

So this might explain why I didn’t grow up expecting to be an Engineer- I was never really sure what I’d be letting myself in for. I’m not from a particularly scientific background, although my dad has been a fantastic engineer all his working life. Therefore to me, engineering was just something …
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Posted in Blog, Headline, News, Outreach, Students | Leave a comment

Mechanical Team Update

Posted on May 19, 2013 by pjm206

It has been a while since the last mechanical team update. There have been two reasons for this. The first is that the 4^th years on the team have sat our Final Exams at Cambridge, the second being in the little spare time we have had, we have been busy building the car.

As the exams are now over and our 4^th year projects are coming to a close (my first draft was just handed to my supervisor today) we thought it was time for an update.

So what has been going on:

Roll bar manufacture:

Marshall Aerospace kindly agreed to bend the tube for our roll bars at a meeting on a cold and blustery morning back in the beginning of March. Material was ordered and by the end of April we got the call to say the roll bars were complete. I took an afternoon off revision to cycle out to Cambridge Airport to collect them.

Alex Robinson- our Systems Designer and general hero with a lathe then finished the assembly of the front roll bar, which had had to be manufactured in two parts due to machining constraints. He also manufactured some inserts for the …
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Posted in 2013 Car, Blog, Build, Cambridge, Headline, Mechanical, News, Students, Testing | 2 Comments

Looking ahead to WSC 2013

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Roger Poolman

Now in race year, we want to take a quick look at the World Solar Challenge itself. The WSC is a biennial race that first took place in 1987. Since then, the reach of the race has grown, and the 2011 instalment saw 37 teams compete from 20 countries – almost twice as many countries as were represented in the 2005 race. In the same period, solar cell technology and lightweight manufacturing technologies, including the use of carbon fibre, have greatly advanced. To ensure that the competition continues to present opportunities for innovation and achievement, the WSC has improved its regulations governing race vehicles.

This year there were some significant changes to the regulations governing the most competitive class of solar vehicles, the Challenger class. The primary change was a move to four wheels, an important one given the recent domination of three-wheeled designs. Not since 1996 when the Honda Dream took the top spot has a team won this class with a four-wheeled vehicle. Secondly, the regulations governing the driver’s head space and visibility have been tightened. The new quantitative restrictions bring them up to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s transport guidelines and the Australian Government National …
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Posted in 2013 Car, Blog, Headline, News, WSC | 1 Comment