On 23rd April, Leyton Sixth Form College in east London hosted a Big Bang Fair event, in which around 800 students from secondary schools across the capital came to learn about the variety of study pathways and future careers in STEM fields, engaging in interactive workshops and demonstrations from organisations across the UK.

Organised by the Student Ambassadors at Queen Mary University of London, Thomas Thorn and Ambreen Tajmal, Discover Materials attended the event with a stand. Discover Materials is a collaboration between Materials Science departments at universities across the UK, as well as the Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, aimed at highlighting the important role that Materials Science has on our everyday lives, and promoting potential careers in Materials Science and Engineering to students and the public.

Through a series of interactive ‘material busks’, students were shown a variety of materials and their properties and how they are useful in our engineered world. Activities which students particularly liked included shape memory alloys, shear thickening materials and superhydrophobic surfaces.

Thomas Thorn, Discover Materials Ambassador and Research Assistant within SEMS said “It’s fantastic to have discussions with students who may not have thought about Materials Science as a potential future career. It’s brilliant to see how interested they become when you show them something like a shape memory alloy or a superhydrophobic surface and they then start thinking about how these properties are useful, and that they could be working with these kinds of materials in their future career.”

Overall, the event was a success and Discover Materials are eager to return next year. We would like to thank Leyton Sixth Form College for hosting the event and for inviting Discover Materials at Queen Mary to attend.