Students from Priory and Miltoncross Schools came along to the Royal Armouries, Fareham to attend an event organised through EBP. It was part of a government-funded ‘Aim Higher’ initiative that seeks to promote the importance of Science & Engineering and the careers associated, in a historical setting.

Year 10 Priory students and Year 9 Miltoncross students attended two separate sessions and Eileen Clegg, Education Officer at the Royal Armouries introduced the day with a talk about forces and motion and how they were important in the use of weaponry; for example cannons, artillery guns, catapults and trebuchets.

Students were then set the task of labelling a diagram with relevant language used in forces and motion such as tension, gravity,air resistance, friction, etc.

Students had the challenge of building their own catapult using a frame, 3 wooden spoons, a bungee and 2 nails. After, aligning their spoons and making the necessary adjustments to the tension of their bungee they had the opportunity to ‘shoot’ boiled sweets and other unique objects (such as a rubber duck or a wooden ball) across the room, measuring how far they could project them.

Up on the Parade Ground a Trebuchet had been set up and several students were able to load and fire a shot into a pallet, experiencing the weight, swing and noise of the wooden contraption.

Finally, Chris Magrath the Curator for the Fort, showed the students ‘behind the scenes’ and gave an informative talk of the history of some of the guns, the restoration process and the industry and how and where the necessary qualifications could be gained.

The sessions ended with the students able to explore the Fort including the Gallery of exhibits and the tunnels for themselves.

Jacquie Jones, Project Co-ordinator for EBP said “the sessions were fantastic, informative and really ‘hands-on’. To be able to fire a Trebuchet was spetacular if not a little scary!”.