In such a scenario, it is of utmost importance to nurture a culture, wherein women have equal opportunity to participate in the workforce while gaining access to unlock their true potential. To foster such an environment, the need for offering young girls inclusive and quality education, aided by affordable vocational training, is more critical than ever before.

Currently, over 132 million girls are out of school. If we put it more elementally, on an average, 1 in 4 girls do not go to school.

With such staggering numbers, the need for providing young women access to sound education is imperative. This is why, at ELGi, strive to champion this cause with the ELGi Matriculation Higher Secondary School, an ELGi Public Welfare Trust initiative.

In line with the United Nations’ 4th Sustainable Development Goal to provide ‘Quality Education’, our young female students are encouraged to pursue their studies in STEM subjects and take part in the National Children Science Congress. This has been met with much enthusiasm and our female students have gone on to win awards at both the district and state levels.

This Women’s Day, let us take a look at the perspectives of the educators at the ELGi school, who have taken on the responsibility to mould our female students to be leaders who #InspireTheFuture.

Formula One’s global initiative, F1 in Schools, is an exciting competition for students aged 9 to 19. It is an international STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) platform that challenges teams to design, manufacture, test, and race miniature F1 cars powered by compressed air. Much like the original Formula One, the cars must conform to the stringent rules and regulations of the competition to qualify. Built out of balsa wood, the cars are scaled down to 1/20 the size of the original. Travelling at speeds of over 68 mph or more, the cars are capable of covering their course in one second or less! Although the race may last for only a second, it takes several months of hard work to build the car.

Students use Computer-Aided Design (CAD) technology to develop the fastest F1 car. The biggest challenge in designing a vehicle is beating the arch enemy of speed — ‘aerodynamic drag’. To understand what drag is, we must first acknowledge that the air around us is a fluid (just like water). When a race car speeds down a track, there is fluid friction between the car and the air molecules, causing it to slow down. To optimise the speed, it is necessary to ensure smooth airflow around the car. Any disturbance in the flow causes turbulence, adding to the drag.

Every aspect of a modern Formula One race car, from the shape to suspension, paint job to the driver’s helmet is aerodynamically designed. The streamlined shape of the car is instrumental in ensuring a smooth (laminar) flow of air with as little turbulence as possible. Teams participating in the competition use similar principles of aerodynamics, ingeniously incorporating fins, wings and grooves in their designs to direct the air more favourably to the wheels. The car is also tested in virtual wind tunnels to check the drag coefficient using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). This helps them identify areas of turbulence and make corresponding changes to the design.