How far can a mouse-trap powered car travel?

There’s a buzz of intense concentration in a teaching laboratory in Cambridge University’s Materials Science Department as pairs of 14-year-olds focus on the afternoon’s task – to make a vehicle powered by a mouse trap.

This is day three of a four-day residential course that aims to give year-10 pupils from around the country a taste for materials science and for university life. The work benches are scattered with materials – wooden sticks and wheels, washers, CDs, tape, glue and string – and the air is full of the sound of sawing, drilling and animated chatter.

Now in its fifth year, the Smallpeice Trust Materials Experience is run by Cambridge’s Materials Science Department in partnership with the Smallpeice Trust, an educational charity which is dedicated to giving young people an insight into the opportunities in engineering.

Participants come from a wide range of backgrounds and a mixture of state and independent schools.

Fourteen of the total of 31 pupils taking part this year are girls. Ana Hallgarten, who goes to South Hampstead High School in north London, is hard at work with a hack saw. She says that the best aspect of the course is the hands-on activities which explore the properties of different materials and give participants a chance to get to grip with basic tools.

“At school, unless you are doing DT, which I’m not, you don’t get a chance to make things, so this is great. It’s my first visit to Cambridge and it’s going to be interesting when we get taken on a tour of the town,” she says.

Will Bradley, a pupil from West Bridgeford School in Nottingham, is working with Tom Allitt, who goes to the British School in Brussels. “Tomorrow we’re going to be seeing whose vehicle goes the furthest and presenting our designs. We’ve still got a lot to get done,” says Will.

Staying at King’s College gives participants a taste of collegiate life and a glimpse of what it would be like to be a university student through a mix of lectures and practical sessions. As one activity, the group is taken to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford.

Before the trip they are given a talk on the materials used in aircraft by Dr Rob Wallach, who organises the Cambridge course. At Duxford they see how aircraft have evolved since the Wright brothers’ first flight and see the benefits of using diverse materials to improve performance.

“It’s fabulous to see how readily these young people adapt to a new environment and how keen they are to engage with new topics. The course gives their self confidence a real boost as they are challenged within a supportive environment,” says Rob Wallach.

“We hope that in time some of them will apply to Cambridge – but the aim of the course is to broaden their horizons and also increase their enthusiasm for engineering and science.”

On the final morning each mouse-trap car team gives a presentation to explain their design approach and the difficulties they faced. The winning design travels 351 cms before running out of momentum. Others travel less impressive distances, one travels backwards, and several fall apart – just like real Formula One racing cars!