It has been an incredibly exciting and action-packed week for our Year 8 mathematicians! As part of our ongoing STEAM expedition, Crash Test Doncaster: How fast is too fast?, students have been stepping out of the classroom to see exactly how the maths they learn on the whiteboard is applied in the real world.
A Visit from the Serious Collisions Investigations Unit
The week kicked off with a gripping presentation from a very special guest: Police Sergeant John Taylor from the Serious Collisions Investigations Unit at South Yorkshire Police.
PS Taylor spoke to the students about the crucial role mathematics plays in real-life police investigations. When a serious collision occurs, investigators rely heavily on maths to piece together exactly what happened. Students were fascinated to learn how equations are used to calculate vehicle speeds from the length of tyre skid marks, and how the scatter location of debris can help map out the exact point of impact.
By walking the students through a real-world case study from a previous incident, PS Taylor brilliantly demonstrated that maths isn’t just about passing exams—it is a vital tool used to keep our communities safe.
Stepping into the Shoes of Investigators
Inspired by PS Taylor’s visit, our students took on the role of data analysts and headed out into the local community to conduct their own primary fieldwork.
Their first task was to carry out a comprehensive traffic and pedestrian count at various locations around the Lakeside area. Students carefully categorised and recorded the flow of different vehicle types (cars, vans, HGVs, and motorbikes) alongside pedestrian footfall.
Calculating Speed on Stadium Way
The most thrilling part of the fieldwork was putting compound measures into practice! Students set up observation points along Stadium Way to investigate local vehicle speeds.
To do this without police radar guns, they had to be resourceful. By using the uniform distance between the street lamp posts as their fixed distance markers, and stopwatches to record the time it took vehicles to travel between them, the students were able to use the classic mathematical formula: Speed = Distance ÷ Time to determine how fast cars were travelling around our local community.
What’s Next?
Now that our Year 8s have gathered all this fantastic raw data, the real mathematical heavy lifting begins! Over the next few lessons, students will be taking their findings into the class rooms. They will be using Google Sheets to digitise their data, organising their counts into grouped frequency tables, and calculating averages to finally answer our expedition’s guiding question: How fast is too fast?
A huge thank you to Police Sergeant John Taylor for giving up his time to inspire our students, and a massive well done to Year 8 for their excellent behaviour and focus during the fieldwork.
