Friday Headlines

01 March 2019

On Thursday 7 February, approximately thirty Year 12 and 13 mathematicians travelled to Bletchley Park. It was an early start for us as we were required to arrive at school for 7.45am. After a two hour coach journey we finally arrived and had an opportunity to explore some of the exhibits and try our hand at some of the interactive code breaking activities.

After an early lunch, we were given a tour by one of the staff members who told us all about the story of Bletchley Park. It was enjoyed thoroughly by everyone, and was an amazing opportunity to learn a great deal about the history of Bletchley Park and of coding, allowing us to see the bigger picture of how mathematics has shaped our world. 

Without a doubt, the highlight of this tour had to be the opportunity to go into the actual office that Alan Turing used to work in. Turing was an astoundingly intellectual man who achieved many great things during his lifetime and played a pivotal role in cracking the German codes during the Second World War by altering a machine that could find settings for the German Enigma Machine. His story was already familiar to many of the girls. 

After this, we had another slot of free time to look around, before finishing off the day with a fun code breaking workshop where we put our knowledge to the test and tried to cypher some messages for ourselves, after which we finally headed back on the coach for the return journey to school.

Mandeep Karlcut, Sixth Form