Over the last two weeks, two lucky college students from Urmston Grammar school had the opportunity to spend one week on a placement at CATE. Brainchild of the Head of Science Mrs Wall and Professor Callum Thomas, their assignment was to analyse carbon footprint of athletes of London 2012 Olympics how the aviation has impacted the environment to bring all the athletes, supporters to the Olympics and analysing how much CO2 has been emitted into the atmosphere and how many supporters have come and which mode of transport each country has come in. With Emily gaining some real life experience last week, last week Elliot Barnett took up the challenge, and work on the project with Professor Callum Thomas.
Elliott comes from Urmston Grammar School in Trafford with a keen interested in the environment:
“I have always been interested in geography, the subject itself and when we’ve come up with topics itself, the environment, CO2 and the global warming. It interested me from that how the greenhouse gasses causing the global warming and how different modes of transport can affect the global warming.”
“There needs to be a change now. If not then that is their choice but they are going to suffer no matter what. Their children and children’s children are going to suffer. I think that’s why they need to change.”
Staff at CATE made sure that Elliot felt like at home and received all the support he could get in order to formulate his report; Professor Callum Thomas] guided me on where I could make improvements, what sort of key states I have to put in and really how to structure. But it is mainly independent work and independent experience to gain experience from it.
One might think that one week might have been too soak up the aura of university. With no time to spare, Elliot is on the right track to build up his UCAS application for the next year, using the placement as a reference.
“It shows my interested in the subject and that I’m quite hopeful in doing the geography and that it show my commitment to the subject but also that I have give up my own time over my holidays to do extra curricular work to give me an extra lump of experience that I can bring in either to university or to a job in the future”
We wish Elliot all the best in his future endeavours and hope that he did enjoy his experience at CATE: “it has definitely been an eye opener for how things work. For me personally I have been in sixth form, I have not started a project from scratch, I have always had extra info that has already been given to me. But to start a project from scratch to find information on my own, to find my own references and build It together like that I think that is something I would definitely recommend to people because it changes the way you think, changes the way that you have to structure your opinion.”