On a blustery Oxfordshire day, the engineering students staying at St Peter’s voyaged to the capital city of London to visit the Science Museum. The Engineering Preparation programme aims to introduce students to a wide range of engineering topics, beyond that taught in high school physics and applied mathematics. The nature of the course is to ensure students experience a taster of topics covered in an engineering degree.
The museum was founded in 1857, located in South Kensington. Today it attracts over 3.3 million annual visitors making it one of the city’s major tourist attractions. With over 150,000 objects on display, the students had a lot to get round, including the world famous Apollo 10 command capsule and Stephenson’s Rocket. The students entered virtual reality using the latest technology, gaining a 360 degree look inside a Soyuz capsule and experience the 400km journey back to Earth from the International Space Station.
Back in St Peter’s, students embarked on the bone-chilling theatrical Oxford Ghost Tour. Bill Spectre dressed as a Victorian undertaker, led students on a historically informative, yet hugely entertaining journey around the city. Oxford is reported to be one of the most haunted cities in British history; students crept down ‘Dead Man’s Walk’ and stood on the exact spot Archbishop Cranmer was executed, marked with a manhole that is still unchanged to this day.