Wilsonian triumphs in Big Bang Competition
Jonathan reports on his success in the Big Bang Competition for his engineering project, RefreshaBraille.
I recently participated in the Big Bang Competition, which is a great opportunity for aspiring young engineers, technologists and scientists aged 11-18 to complete a project in a STEM subject and submit it to the judging panel for a chance to win amazing awards as well as display the project at the Big Bang fair. I developed an engineering project called RefreshaBraille which allows blind and visually impaired people to access the text on their computers via a morphing, single cell braille display. If you're wondering what that means, it is essentially a device containing six very precise motors with arms, individually lifting and lowering six pins to form raised dots or flat sections which can represent every single character to people who can read braille.
I submitted my project to the Big Bang competition in March, having worked on it since the summer holidays and was delighted to hear in May that I had been named a finalist and I was invited to the Big Bang Competition project showcase and awards ceremony earlier this month at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham where I received the award of Intermediate Engineering. The following day (Wednesday), I featured in a live radio interview about my project on BBC Radio London where I answered questions about my project and what I won in the competition.
Competing in the Big Bang Competition has been a very rewarding experience which really helped me to develop my skills in engineering, electronics and coding over the course of creating my project as well as valuable skills in communication and public speaking when presenting my project to other people at the Big Bang fair as well as on live radio. I would highly recommend competing in the competition as it is a highly rewarding experience where all people of secondary school ages can sharpen their skills in STEM, even gaining the chance to win large monetary prizes!
