Visit from an Engineer

Engineers’ Week - By Jessica and Tara

On Tuesday the 20th of March, 5th and 6th class had Mr.Gerard Ronayne, a Civil Engineer visit our classroom to teach us about the job of an engineer and how important engineering is.

We had an interesting discussion. In the discussion, we learned about the different types of engineers and what they are needed for. Gerard does quite a bit of travelling in his job – he frequently travels back and forth between Ireland and London and he told us about work some work he did in the Czech Republic.

Gerard then talked to us about the importance of using the right materials in his job. He explained this using an example of a mini bridge he designed. It was a very creative bridge made just with everyday materials but it showed us how strong some materials are when you use them correctly.

He also showed us a model of a mini aeroplane and we talked about how many engineers it takes to construct an aeroplane. He showed us the new formula one car and the old formula one car and we looked at the differences and how they have improved over the years. We found out why they have wings and why they have a flat surface.

He also gave us some maths challenges and we all pitched in and tried to find out the answer e.g. 2x +3y +5x = 22 (we figured it out in the end!)

Next we got to work in groups. He gave us a task to design a bridge in groups of four. All we were allowed to use was a flexible ruler, a regular ruler, paper and elastic bands. The challenge was to design a structure that could hold as many books as possible. It was difficult at first but with some help we were surprised at the results and how many books the winning design could hold.

We think the most interesting thing we learned was that if you set your mind to something, you can achieve it and science is very interesting!

We would like to thank Gerard, Saoirse’s Dad for taking time out of his day to teach us about engineering!