The children of Pownall Hall School had a very exciting lesson in code breaking when The Enigma Project visited the school last week.
The Enigma Project is part of the Millennium Mathematics Project at the University of Cambridge, aimed at inspiring students in Mathematics, Science and History through codes and code breaking.
Dr James Grime, a lecturer at Cambridge University, gave a presentation to the children in Forms 3-6 about the mathematics and history of code breaking. The children were told lots of interesting stories about different codes which have been used, from the Spartans to the present day.
The highlight of the visit was a demonstration of a genuine Enigma Machine, which was used by the Germans in World War 2. This was especially exciting as a member of Form 1 actually lives in the house once owned by Alan Turing, a mathematician who played a significant part in cracking the Enigma code.
After the presentation, the children had the opportunity to be code breakers themselves in a series of workshop sessions organised by James. Some of the younger children made wheels to help crack a Caesar Shift code and the older pupils tackled some tricky substitution codes.
