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Student science project / Team leadership

CanSat

Taking a mathematical model into a physical project.

My role

Team lead & modelling

Period

2024–2026

Focus

Physics · Prediction · Team coordination

At Brighton College, I led a CanSat team and worked on multivariate weather and trajectory prediction as part of the system design.

The work, in brief

A student CanSat design project that brought together system planning, weather and trajectory modelling, and team leadership.

On this page+

01

A physical setting for the mathematics

CanSat projects bring the tasks of a satellite into a small student-built system. They connect scientific objectives with design constraints, measurements and a plan for interpreting the resulting data.

For me, the project was an opportunity to apply mathematics and physics beyond an exam question. A prediction has to be related to something a system can actually measure.

02

What I worked on

I led the team’s system-design work and developed a multivariate model for weather and trajectory prediction. The model brought several physical inputs together rather than treating the flight as a single-variable problem.

The work combined modelling with team coordination: relating the scientific questions to the system the group was designing and giving the analysis a role in the larger project.

  1. 01Physical variables
  2. 02Weather & trajectory model
  3. 03Predicted behavior

03

The wider academic context

The project sat alongside my A-level studies in Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Mandarin. I also took part in mathematical and physics competitions and served as editor-in-chief of the school journal From Stardust.

Together, those activities gave me practice approaching technical material in different ways: solving a problem, coordinating a project, and presenting ideas for a reader.

Have a project, research question or collaboration in mind?

peterhpywk@gmail.com