On Sunday the 4th of February, two teams of students from Eltham College competed in the Inter-School Safe Cracking competition. A five-month competition testing the Physics knowledge, problem-solving, creativity and teamwork of many of the UK’s top young physicists and engineers. Their task was to design and build a ‘safe’ comprising two Physics phenomena which need to resist being ‘cracked’ by their peers, some of the brightest and most ingenious young Physicists and Engineers in the country. The ‘safe’ had to resist being cracked for 10mins, and using their knowledge of Physics, open and reset their safe in under 5mins. They also underwent serious interrogation from the judging panel of industry experts to quiz them on their build and physics knowledge.
The student designed and built their safes with mentorship from engineers and physicists in industry. Team Wallace and Gromit designed a safe built on principles of electromagnetism and resonance which was well regarded by the judges. Team trolls built a safe on the principles of laser diffraction and a Wheatstone bridge, showing excellent application of physics principles developed thus far in Lower 6.
Unfortunately, neither team placed in the top 3 of 30 safes, however we are very proud to see the skills they developed over the course of the competition which we know will be immensely useful to them moving forward.
