There were 5 sessions, a lecture from a very enthusiastic cambridge profesor, with a real working 2nd world war enigma machine, followed by 4 sessions that covered more code breaking, mystery solving, a celtic knot investigation, and problem solving games and puzzles.
Here's what some of the students thought.
A group of year 8 travelled to Sheldon School to take part in the Enigma Maths Challenge which consists of puzzles, breaking codes, mysteries and solving problems.
The day started in the hall, we joined the other schools that were already there. A mathematician from Cambridge University came in with an enigma machine which was used in World War 2 to make and break codes. We all got the chance to see how the machine worked and it is the only one that is not in a museum.
The mathematician talked to us about his job and what we would be doing during the day. He talked to us that there are jobs that are just breaking codes and solving problems. Some of the best code breakers were used during the war to solve any codes that the Germans sent. After a while a machine was built so that the English could find out what the message said before the German officers knew what it said.
We learnt a lot about the enigma machine and how it worked at what different things mathematicians do as a job. The talk was very helpful and inspiring.
Kayleigh Roberts
We did a lesson on code breaking with a mathematician from Cambridge University. He showed us lots of different methods to decipher codes for example very famous codes such as the caesar code. He gave us lots of different codes for us to work them out and decipher them. As we went along we got better and could handle more difficult ones so we definately learnt new skills and we will take them back to JBS. Overall the lesson and the whole day was very good and we had a great time!
Caoimhe Kelly
Looks like a brilliant day all round! So glad it was a success and that Yr 8 got so much from it!
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