Women triumph in engineering accolades

Ruth Amos, 16 and from Eckington School in Derbyshire was showing her ‘Stair Steady’ which is an arm that can be slid up a square tube mounted beside a stair, to enable a partly disabled person to pull themselves upwards.The clever bit is the combination of high friction and low friction pads inside the connecting slide, that ensure that the device firmly engages the square tube on the downward pull, but can easily be slid up on the upward push. She told us that the idea came about, “Because my grandparents have problems and my teacher’s father had a stroke and had trouble getting upstairs, but did not want to pay for a stair lift.” Equally ingenious was the ‘Electronic Safety Helmet’ devised by Ciara Mooney and Emer McClory, just 12 and 14 years old respectively, from the Sacred Heart Grammar School in Newry in Northern Ireland, which also won them first prize in their age group. The helmet has front and rear LEDs that come on automatically when it gets dark, brake light LEDs that come on if the rider tilts their head back for more than a few seconds, and right and left turn indicator LEDs that come on if the head is deliberately inclined right or left. Different tones indicate to the rider that brake or turn indicators have been illuminated. Emer said: “We did our cycling proficiency tests a year ago and found it very difficult to keep control when you take your hands off to indicate.” For more information, see the News section of the October edition of Eureka and Young Engineers