Winners
Midlands and East
West Park Primary School, Wolverhampton
The Wonderful Wacky Mansion
Not content with inventing a single product, The Wonderful Wacky Mansion is in fact the company name that the West Park Primary team came up with. Their first invention is a teapot for the Mad Hatter himself – and it’s no ordinary teapot. Shaped like a mouse, you put ingredients in the top, check the temperature gauge, and your ‘tea’ comes out of the mouse’s tongue. They’ve even gone as far as developing a slogan: “all tea drinkers will be mad as a hatter not to have one.”
North West
Great Arley School, Thornton-Cleveleys, Lancashire
Charlie The Chair Stacker
Site supervisor Mr Figgins will be delighted with the pupils at Great Arley: they’ve created a chair stacker to put away the chairs after assembly – the job he found most tiresome. Remote controlled and with four wheels on a rotating axle, Charlie moves around the hall easily then uses pincers and magnets on his arms to place chairs in position or stack them away. Charlie is solar powered and built from reclaimed materials including an old traffic cone.
South East
Northbourne Park School, Deal, Kent
Referee?!
Disputed goals will be a thing of the past with Northbourne Park’s Referee. Every moment of the game is captured on the wrist camera, and when there’s a dodgy tackle or goal-line scramble, the human ref can get an instant replay on the lightweight computer screen he carries in his backpack. The screen is on an electronic arm so it shows the replay right in front of his eyes.
South West
Sunninghill Preparatory School, Dorchester, Dorset
Tyer-Upper
There’ll be no more tripping over undone shoelaces at Sunninghill if the Tyer-Upper goes into production. Its prosthetic hands and fingers are designed to tie and untie laces automatically when attached to a shoe. Kept in place by a cushioned heel support, it not only keeps you looking smart, but is safe and simple too.
Scotland
Lincluden Primary School, Dumfries, Dumfries and Galloway
Football Champion
How do you get boys doing the vacuuming? Simple: make a vacuum cleaner that looks like a football! The round shape means it rolls across the floor with minimal effort – while brushes in the form of boots do the difficult corners. It can climb stairs, is controlled by voice technology and has a clear dust collector so it’s easy to tell when it needs emptying. And for the final touch, it operates in total silence – so you can carry on watching the TV.
Wales
Llangyfelach Primary School, Swansea
The BFT Baby Food Tester
Dipping your finger in a baby’s food to see if the temperature feels right is neither particularly accurate nor particularly healthy. The BFT provides a different approach. Using the buttons at the base of the device, you enter your baby’s age in months, then put a spoonful of food into BFT’s mouth. If a tick appears on the screen at the back, the temperature’s just right.
North East
Marden Bridge Middle School, Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear
The Robo-Kett and Muganator
Not only does the Robo-Kett brew the perfect cuppa, it also keeps itself filled up with water, tea bags and coffee beans using its wheels to move around the kitchen and robotic arms to open the store cupboards. It even recycles used teabags into fuel to power itself. Its companion, the Mugnator, is just as intelligent with a hat to keep drinks warm and a speaker to warn off potential tea-thieves.
