The Jaguar Cars Maths In Motion Challenge For Schools

14th July 2008

The Summer Madness Race was run this morning. To see the results Click here.

8th July 2008

We were invited to meet the whole team behind our Age Range 1 Champions, St. Joseph's R.C. Primary School, Billingham, today. We were treated to a rousing welcome and we watched the race to find out who was going to represent them in the 'Summer Madness Race'. As one of the' pit crew' said, "We are right proud of our boys. They went off to race and came back with a big gold cup for us all!" Teamwork or what? We had a smashing time and thanks to everyone for making us so welcome! The pictures show some of the team with Brian and Wendy, watching the race and the designers of the shirts that the winning team wore to the National Final.

4th July 2008

Although not officially part of the Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge, many of you take part in the international races organised by Val Brooks and Angela Jones. The last international race was run on a special 'one off' imaginery track around the streets near to Stockton City Learning Centre. Val believes in starting them young in Stockton and recently had Year 4 students creating animations that were relevant to this race. The winning animation, created by Adam, is shown below. It may take a little while to load as it is a very large file!

27th June 2008

The 2007/8 National Final took place yesterday amidst a great deal of excitement. If you want to read about what happened and see who came where, just click on 'The Races' and then on the 'National Final' button.

17th June 2008

'BIG GUNS AT THE EMIRATES'

We have just got back from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust Achievement Show, which was held at the Emirates Stadium today. There were about 1,000 teachers at the Show and we had been asked to give a presentation in the Maths area about the Challenge and the work we do to help raise achievement levels in mathematics. We had asked 'the boys' from Chatham House Grammar School, Ramsgate to help us out and, having first done their Biology GCSE in the morning, they jumped on the train and came up to London to join us!! During our presentation they actually managed to set up a car from start to finish and run a race "just to see who worked best under the pressure" as one of them said! The picture below shows them, together with myself and Wendy.

Thanks go to Matthew (second from the left) for agreeing to talk to the audience (no mean feat for a 17 year old!) and helping me out and thanks also to John Tebbutt for allowing them to have a day out of school and for bringing them.

A MESSAGE FROM WHIXALL C. OF E. PRIMARY SCHOOL

Hello all... firstly a big thank you to all involved... my kids are really buzzing and Maths has taken on a whole new light!!! Maybe of interest to you is that a parent who got wind of the school's club got in touch with me and informed me that he MOTs cars for a living and had a rather special vehicle coming in at the end of last half term - a genuine 1957 D-Type jag owned by a local removal firm!!

So we arranged for him to bring it in and myself and the F1 club went out to do some 'Maths' about the car (figuring out its top speed on the Mulsanne Straight in 1957 given the engine revs and diff ratio, we the calculated wheel circumference and wheel revs and from there got to its top speed (174mph!!) Needless to say they loved it...and truth be told so did I! I've enclosed some pictures! (see below)

NOW THE SERIOUS BIT!!!! I've also attached my entry for the teachers race too! Fingers crossed!!

and finally a big thanks again to all involved!!! A fab competition and a real boost for morale

Regards

Andy Butler - Whixall C. of E. Primary School

11th May 2008

2008/9 CHALLENGE IS LAUNCHED

Following pressure from many schools (and students!) we have launched the 2008/9 Challenge with the publication of Version 10 of the software. The new software has some new features in it and already over 400 schools have signed up to take part. Contact us on info@mathschallenge.org.uk for further details.

It's Cups 'n Medals at Chatham House Grammar School

Some of us at Chatham House Grammar School, Ramsgate, have been taking part in a weekly after school 'Maths in Motion' Club since before Christmas and have now raced on all of the tracks in the software - competitively! Working under the careful eye of our teacher, Dr. John Tebbutt (and three sixth formers), we have almost taken the roof off the Maths Dept. building on some Monday evenings as some of the races have been that close! Our final Club night of the 2007/8 year saw several of us still capable of walking away with the honours, so the excitement was tremendous. We had invited Brian and Wendy Richardson to attend and were thrilled that they had managed to come along and join us for the evening.

After a very close race, the spoils were decided upon and Brian presented the winners with their prizes. We have had a good year and hope that we can do it all over again next season! The pictures show some of the winners with their trophies.

How Long Is A Piece Of String?
We had a brilliant day at Allertonshire School, working with some of their students and pupils from 4 of their feeder Primary Schools. We finished up with a race and it was a very close run thing indeed!!