Satellites Brick by Brick

The aim of this project, is to further develop an existing successful workshop that has already been delivered to over 1500 primary school children in years 3-6 in the South Wales area in the past 7 months.
The project aims to inform young people of the role of satellites whilst inspiring and motivating interest.

The Lego satellite workshop is a 75 minute workshop that is taken to primary schools and delivered free of charge within the classroom. These are delivered by trained student ambassadors from within Cardiff University, School of Physics and Astronomy. The workshop considers the role of satellites and their importance to us on Earth. The project looks at international, national and local companies who work with such satellite technology and uses the recent UK satellite launch as reference. The workshop also considers the environmental impact of rocket launches and the need for returnable and reusable satellites to minimise 'space junk'. Individuals then have the opportunity to build a satellite with a specific role, using bespoke lego kits , which not only fits into the payload bay of the Lego Rocket brought along but that also satisfies budget constraints. Feedback from schools has been 100% positive.

The next stage of the project is to further develop existing links with local satellite companies such as Space Forge, to have their 'expert' involvement within the workshops and to be able to reach a higher number of schools and teachers with additional equipment and resources. Schools in socioeconomically deprived area will be targeted for workshop delivery.

The delivery of the workshop to family and community groups will also be further developed.

On a school by school basis, all schools who tweet information on the workshops are retweeted from the physics twitter page and a reference to all logged.

Regular newsletters are sent via mail shots to all subscribers to the Cardiff University Physx blog and the lego workshop will focus within these.

Presentation of the work will be carried out at events such as NAM23 Cardiff, the Ogden Outreach general meeting (which sees outreach officers from across the country meet to discuss ideas), University Civic mission events, STEM events, IoP Wales Forum, IoP wales Brecon etc.