Your engineering ideas revealed

You’ve been listening to our Engineering Academy podcasts, downloading our activity workbooks, and coming to our events.

Earlier this month, we asked you to tell us about your OWN engineering adventures – from cool things you’ve designed and made, to your ideas of engineering that could help change the world for the better.

We had a huge amount of entries – thank you to all of you.

Here are some of the amazing adventures and ideas that you told us about…

Isamaya, aged 8

Isamaya’s invention is called the ‘Picker Upper’. It’s a scooter with a BIG red button on the top. On the back of the scooter is a litter picker!

When you press the button, the litter picker will pick up rubbish and put it in the bin (which is attached to the side of the scooter). Clever!

Milo, aged 7

Milo sent us a design for a machine that can recognise objects in your room and work out how long it will take to tidy up. It even plays motivating music to keep you on task! How cool is that?

Arie, aged 6

Arie has made a bug house out of LEGO.

There are lots of holes for the bugs to go in, with bright colours to attract them.

The flowers will make the bugs feel at home. You can see Arie’s design here!

Daniel, aged 9

Daniel came up with a plan for a solar and pedal powered train – sounds like it would keep you fit whilst you travel!

Abigail, aged 8

Abigail tackled the problem of ultra-violet spy pens. It can be hard to see what you’ve written but by using a dark box you can get to see your secrets. Although, make sure you only look at YOUR own secrets!

Xavi, aged 9

Xavi invented a machine that makes electricity! If you want a sweet then you have to run on a conveyer belt which powers the fans at the bottom. The fans generate electricity and is used in every house!

Matilda, aged 10

Matilda thought very carefully about the design of her snow beetle – a cool vehicle on skis. She included loads of great features to keep it steady in the snow!

Elliot, aged 10

Elliot really stood out with his YouTube video about how to make a disco lamp out of Lego – groovy!

Risindu, aged 11

Risindu sent us a design for a cleaning robot made with two LEGO motors, a battery pack, a receiver and loads of Lego blocks. It’s controlled with a remote control and is capable of cleaning on hard floors. It took Risindu one hour of trial and error until he finally made to work!

Juliette, aged 8

We loved Juliette’s plan for planting seeds and seeing her pictures of her creation.

Daisy, aged 6

Daisy amazed us with her thoughtful and careful designs for a zoo. She said in her entry “I designed and made my own zoo, and I had to think about lots of things like where to put bins so people didn’t drop litter, toilets, and pathways to make it easy to find your way around. It took me weeks and used some paper mache, painting, modelling, LEGO Duplo, and lots more. I am very proud of it and my favourite is the penguin enclosure”. Daisy put a lot of thought into her project and used a variety of materials to create her zoo.

Well done to everyone who entered – we were blown away with your ideas and the amount of creativity you all demonstrated – definitely engineering superstars of the future!