Ada Lovelace was a British mathematician and writer who wrote and published the first computer algorithm in 1843. Her achievements are celebrated every October with STEM events across the country. On October 8th a team of 4 Year 8 students represented DGS at our local event - the Ada Lovelace Challenge day held at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL).

Teams from schools across the region tackled a computing challenge where they built electronic circuits and wrote computer code in order to solve a problem. The DGS team was tasked with building a landing sensor for a spacecraft which could detect the distance from a planet's surface and whether or not the speed of approach was too fast.  Supported by staff from RAL, the team worked hard to perfect their design, which worked by detecting changes in light levels. 

During the day the teams also learned about careers in scientific computing and tried out the very latest in visualisation technology as well as holding an object as old as the core of the earth - a 4.5 billion year old meteorite.

Well done to our team - they completed their challenge and were brilliant representatives of the school.