Today has been the first day of bad weather that we'd had in ages! Much worse than forecast, so I had to scrap plans of climbing on the sea cliffs with my students and headed indoors instead. On the plus side there was a mini-festival happening at the Boardroom Climbing Wall, so there was much to see and do. There was a competition going on that we didn't enter, but did watch a few of the 'super strong' during the heats on the big over hanging wall there.
Instead, we had our own mini-team comp, and our made our own team uniform with some temporary tattoos that I'd got hold of!
The equipment manufacturer DMM, were there doing some kit tests and demonstrating how the equipment is actually made. This mixed in a bit of 'Science' and 'Design Technology' into the day, proving once again how beneficial 'Outdoor Education' is in showing students applications in real life situations. Using the DMM testing rig, this old karabiner was put under a strain of over 24KN (more than 2 tonnes!) before it eventually broke. It's nice to know (and visually see), how strong the equipment that we (literally) hang our lives on is! (and if those numbers or Kilo Newtons (KN) don't mean anything to you - the worst/biggest climbing fall ever, could only produce about a 7KN force, so we're in good hands with DMM kit!).
Jim (Mr DMM) also showed the students how a karabiner is actually made and had some samples from parts of the process. All very interesting...
Back outside, the rains continued, but I stopped on the way back to The Cottage to appreciate this double rainbow!
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