Maths, Met Office and Medicine

Dartmouth Academy was invited by the University of Exeter to send two teams of Year 9 girls to spend the day investigating maths within different career areas. The start of the day involved the girls working with three meteorologists based at the Met Office in Exeter who described their education and chosen career paths to the students. All the meteorologists had studied Maths and Science at university were now applying these in their daily roles, which varied from forecasting the UK weather to predicting possible climate change and investigating its reasons. Our two teams were given the challenge of sorting data in the form of colour coded lolly sticks which formed a clear pattern on temperature changes over 50 years. Academy student Katie said she didn’t realise this was Maths as it was so much fun! After lunch, which was spent in the University's new Forum building, the teams were given a talk from an NHS hospital pharmacist. She described what her role involved and then gave the teams a medical task in which they had to calculate various factors like age and weight to prescribe medicines. This was quite challenging but the girls worked hard and came up with the correct dosages to save a man’s life. The idea of the day was to show the girls how useful and important maths is when applied to everyday situations.