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  • Sports & leisure
  • Mechanical
  • Opinion

The road to Silverstone: preparing for Formula Student 2024

Cara Fox, Team Principal at Queen Mary University of London’s Formula Student team, writes about the importance of building a diverse team and how she and her teammates are preparing for this year’s competition.

Children on the Bandit Bomber rollercoaster in Abu Dhabi.
  • Mechanical
  • Sports & leisure
  • Issue 66

What makes an exciting roller coaster?

Alton Towers has a new roller coaster, Galactica, that requires virtual reality headsets and participants experiencing a level of G-force acceleration greater than a rocket launch. Engineers, designers and enthusiasts describe elements of roller coasters and what makes some rides scarier than others.

Two children around five years old climbing up oval shaped 'floating' platforms surrounded by protective wire mesh
  • Sports & leisure
  • Design & manufacturing
  • Issue 98

An engineered adventure

Children's play areas can be interactive, multisensory experiences, designed by engineers, architects and designers to develop key skills. Neil Cumins spoke to Spencer Luckey, the creator of Climbit – an interactive obstacle course spanning four storeys at the heart of Belfast’s W5 science centre.

A woman in glasses looking relaxed and smiling in an office
  • Mechanical
  • Sports & leisure
  • Profiles
  • Issue 98

On the fast track to green hydrogen

Dr Caroline Hargrove CBE FREng's career has taken her from pioneering research in computer modelling of particle interactions, into racing car simulators, and onto medical technology and the production of green hydrogen.

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A Black woman with brown, tied up hair is wearing a black protective sports headband and a black t-shirt. Her face is tilted upwards and she is looking to the left of the camera
  • Health & medical
  • Sports & leisure
  • Innovation Watch

The headband reducing the risk of brain injury

Halos is a sports headband for concussion and sub-concussion protection, which will benefit people playing in sports where head impacts occur, such as football, rugby, and hockey.

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  • Technology & robotics
  • Sports & leisure
  • Innovation Watch
  • Issue 93

Bend it like a simulated avatar

The world's top free-kick-takers can curve a football in a way the goalkeeper can’t anticipate. Training to save these is no easy task. Now, Belfast startup INCISIV just might have a helping hand for goalies, with an ultra-programmable virtual reality technology.

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A cartoon of a woman with a smartphone next to her showing it has recognised her face.
  • Technology & robotics
  • Software & computer science
  • Sports & leisure
  • How does that work?
  • Issue 92

Face filters

It started with face swaps, flower crowns and appended dog ears. Now, all manner of transformative sorcery is just a tap away.

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A soundsystem made from wood, painted red and green with "Hertz So Good" on the side.
  • Arts & culture
  • Sports & leisure
  • How I got here
  • Issue 92

Q&A: Stan Jones

An opportune moment led to a career designing adventure playgrounds (and a soundsystem for Shambala Festival on the side) for Stan Jones.

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  • Sports & leisure
  • Mechanical

Winning Formula Student

In July 2022, the University of Glasgow’s UGRacing team was the overall winner of university motorsports championship, Formula Student. It was the first Scottish team to do so and only the third UK team ever to lift the crown since the competition started in 1998. The team principal, Jamie Clarke, wrote about the team’s experiences for Ingenia.

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  • Sports & leisure
  • Mechanical
  • How I got here

Q&A: George Imafidon, electric racing performance engineer

George Imafidon wears many hats. He’s a performance engineer at X44, Sir Lewis Hamilton MBE HonFREng’s electric motorsports team; CEO and Co-Founder of Motivez, improving access to STEM careers; and is on the Hamilton Commission board, investigating the representation of Black people in motorsport.

A photograph of a football field with fireworks.
  • Sports & leisure
  • Issue 89

Creating pitch perfect sports grounds

When it comes to management of turf in sports grounds, expertise generated in the UK is in demand. The UK grounds-management sector is valued at over £1 billion and has been driven by the large levels of employer and volunteering activity combined with engineering innovation.

Someone in a motion capture suit, who is controlling the motion of a woodland avatar on a digital animation in the background.
  • Arts & culture
  • Sports & leisure
  • Issue 88

Entertaining audiences of the future

In 2019, a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Challenge Fund, Audience of the Future, was launched to explore how immersive technology could transform audience experiences. During COVID-19 they used their technology to bring these experiences into the home.

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A person with blow-dried blue and pink hair
  • Design & manufacturing
  • Sports & leisure
  • How does that work?
  • Issue 85

Electric hairdryers

Invented in the 1920s, the electric hairdryer is an everyday household object that has changed significantly over the past century – and is likely to continue developing as technology evolves.

The empty chairs and football field at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
  • Civil & structural
  • Sports & leisure
  • Issue 77

The football pitch in three pieces

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is part of a regeneration project that has transformed the stadium and surrounding area. As well as being home to Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, the stadium will host NFL games in the UK and it boasts the world’s first dividing sliding pitch.

  • Mechanical
  • Sports & leisure
  • Profiles
  • Issue 74

A formula for success

Over the past 30 years, Paddy Lowe FREng has seen Formula One motor racing grow from small teams to a billion pound enterprise at the forefront of technology. He has introduced active suspension, hybrid engines and other key technologies that have changed the profile of motor racing.

Four British Women's cyclists, cycling in a line in front of a crowd, in the velodrome at the Rio Olympics.
  • Sports & leisure
  • Issue 70

Going for gold

The success of Great Britain’s cycling team at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympic Games was celebrated, but what about the closely guarded technology that contributed to their success? The engineering approaches taken to shave as much time as possible off the clock are spoken about by Professor Tony Purnell.

A large body of water outside with a wave generator and surfers.
  • Sports & leisure
  • Maritime & naval
  • Issue 69

How to create the perfect wave

From small waves lapping at your feet and swells suitable for surfing to storm waves for testing structures and even tsunamis, waves of any shape and any size can now be engineered. What are the techniques and conditions needed to model waves and what makes some more powerful than others?

A set of Bluetooth headphones.
  • Electricals & electronics
  • Sports & leisure
  • How does that work?
  • Issue 66

Noise-cancelling headphones

Used by plane and train passengers wanting to listen to radio, music or film without hearing background noises, active noise-cancelling (ANC) headphones are able to prevent outside noise from leaking through to the inside of headphones.