Meeting the stars of tomorrow
Brooks High School in Tasmania is home to budding engineers and race car driversA detour during the recent drive program for Toyota's Camry Hybrid introduced Australia's motoring media to a team of world beaters.
It didn't get much of an airing in the media at the time, but the PentaGliders — a team of three boys and a girl — defeated all comers in the Formula One Technology Challenge last year. Supported by a not for profit organisation (Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd) the Formula One Technology Challenge (F1 in Schools) encourages kids to learn about automotive engineering in a competitive environment involving 17,000 schools from 31 different countries around the world.
The world finals for the competition — hailed as "the biggest science and technology competition on the planet" — were held in Malaysia during September last year. Not only did the PentaGliders take out the Bernie Ecclestone Trophy, they met the F1 honcho himself and were awarded scholarships to City University London, to study engineering. As well as scoring maximum points in 11 criteria, the PentaGliders team also fielded the fastest car for the three-day event. Track time was 1.084 seconds over a 20-metre distance, earning them the Fastest Car Award and the Best Engineered Design Award, the latter sponsored by the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 team. It is the sixth time in seven finals that an Aussie team has won that particular award.
A reaction time of 0.010 seconds was recorded for Amy Winter, pictured with fellow team member Jack Ball, during the event. That was the fastest time ever recorded during the world finals. Earlier in the year the PentaGliders had won the Australian national final and team members are already being groomed for careers in the industry.
Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd was established in 1998 to inspire and encourage students to follow a career path in engineering. Through the efforts of the REA, students aged from 11 are learning about "industry standard 3D engineering design and testing software as well as computer-controlled manufacturing technology".
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