Think Club 0 – Maker Week, day 1

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The intrepid members of Think Club 0 – our trial of a maker club – today began preparations for Maker Faire UK in a couple of weekends’ time. We’ve several projects to show, including a couple of physics/arts installation pieces. I’ve previously posted about early efforts with the pendulum wave, and we’ll come back to that later in the week. Today, however, was all about cardboard. Well, cardboard, and dismembering miniature tripods.

It’ll all make sense as we make more progress, but today looked like this:

Great work from everyone today. We’ll show you progress through the week, as everything starts to take shape. We may even play more Spaceteam.

Science Matters: BSA interview politicians

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Think Physics won’t be passing comment on individual party policies during the election.

However, the British Science Association have recently published this set of interviews with science spokespeople from some the UK’s major parties, which allows us to neatly side-step any endorsement or criticism of a particular platform.

For a little more information on the interviews, the BSA have an accompanying website.

The Satellite Sector

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The UK space sector currently supports 95,000 full-time jobs – and is growing.

Space in the UK contributes an impressive £11.3 billion to the UK economy each year and has been growing at an average of 7.2% over the last 2 years.
(from Shaping the future of the UK space sector – UK Government)

By 2030 it is hoped the Space sector will contribute over £40 billion to the UK economy whilst creating over 100,000 further jobs. Expansion in the satellite sector is being supported by Catapult – Satellite Applications. Their mission: “To innovate for a better world, empowered by satellites”. The positions they’re currently recruiting for give an idea of their work:

  • Senior Fisheries Analyst – working on a project codenamed “eyes of the seas” which includes delivering human analytics to provide solutions to end illegal fishing
  • Space Innovation Facilitator – educating and inspiring the public sector on the uses of satellite applications and data
  • Internships to investigate radio receiver development, signal processing and multi sensor positioning

Here in the North East, we’ve a Satellite Centre of Excellence with a key focus on engaging business and looking at ways of using data to support the offshore oil, gas and renewable technologies sectors; transport and logistics; and software and applications development.

There will also be a range of job opportunities for people with an interest in satellites, as well as businesses who could use to their advantage satellite data. All will require people with skills and knowledge in STEM subjects.  There will also be lots of new opportunities which have not even been thought of yet!

Teachers: you may find the video at the top of this post useful, and also this “Satellites for Everyone” PDF.

Future Opportunities: Atom Bank creating new jobs

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Atom Bank is a new company which hopes to open as a bank in October 2015, and aims to employ 450 employees over the next five years. Located in Durham, Atom Bank describes itself as “designed for digital” and wants to offer the customer a new, innovative experience in banking, for those who engage with new ideas and new technologies.

Teachers: this is a great example to share with pupils to highlight career possibilities within the financial sector, which combine banking with digital and business roles.  In Atom bank, and companies like it, there will be careers in:

  • People and customer experience
  • Technology
  • Marketing and propositions
  • Finance and risk
  • Operations
  • Business

Job titles include: marketing, business analysts, solutions architects, technical architects, credit risk manager and financial crime (though we think that means preventing crime, not carrying it out).

Post 16 subject choices: Combinations of Maths, Computer Science,  Physics, Further Maths, Business Studies, and ICT will be useful for students aiming for careers in this sector.

Website: www.atombank.co.uk

Twitter: @atom_bank