M&I Materials has donated Wolfmet tungsten alloy to help the Europe’s largest event aimed at encouraging young people to choose a career in science, technology, engineering and maths.

Maker Faire, which takes place between 26th and 27th of April in Newcastle, is a family-friendly festival of invention and creativity where makers, hackers, coders and inventors from all over the world come together to share their projects, inventions and latest technology with an eager audience.

M&I Materials has provided a number of tungsten pieces to the Life Science Centre in Newcastle, organisers of Maker Faire UK, to be used in an educational puzzle entitled “Dolls of Confusion”. M&I works with a number of educational institutions with the aim of bringing more people into the field of science and engineering.

The puzzle, created from an idea which originated by the National Physical Laboratory, is a series of Russian dolls that have been weighted with lead and tungsten. People are asked to place the dolls in order of weight rather than size. Due to the extreme density of tungsten, it is perfect for this purpose as it can be used to dramatically increase the weight of the smaller dolls. The intention of the game is to display how humans find it difficult to measure objects using sight/feel alone.

Noel Jackson, Head of Education at the Life Science Centre, said: “Maker Faire offers a great opportunity to show that science, technology, engineering and maths provide a wide range of fantastic career opportunities and are loads of fun as well. Over 500 people challenged the dolls. Only one person put them in the right order and that was a child who just scrambled the dolls at random without feeling their weights. Everyone who felt the dolls was bamboozled. We are grateful to M&I Materials for providing us with the resources we needed to make this a success.”

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