Sewage tunnels
Use mathematical process skills to design a sewage tunnel
This activity accompanies the Shifting Sewage film which looks at the sewage tunnels being built under London. This activity challenges students to use their mathematical skills to calculate the critical dimensions of the tunnel that will be built. It could also be taught in design & technology or engineering, with the emphasis on how the development will affect the quality of life and how it could be realised.
Activity info, teachers' notes and curriculum links
This activity challenges students to move beyond an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach to sewage as they use and develop their mathematical process skills within the real-world contexts presented.
The activity sheet includes teacher notes, guidance, useful web links, and links (where appropriate) to the national curriculum in each of the four devolved UK nations; England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Download the activity sheets for free below!
All activity sheets and supporting resources (including film clips!) are free to download, and all the documents are fully editable, so you can tailor them to your students' and your schools' needs.
And please do share your classroom learning highlights with us @IETeducation
Available Downloads
Videos
Shifting sewage
Related resources
We’re upgrading our systems, and this includes changes to our customer and member account log in, MyIET. It’s part of our big picture plan to deliver a great experience for you and our wider engineering community.
Whilst most of our websites remain available for browsing, it will not be possible to log in to purchase products or access services from Thursday, 17 April to Wednesday, 30 April 2025. Our Member Relations team is here to help and for many of our services, including processing payments or orders, we’ll be able to support you over the phone on +44 (0)1438 765678 or email via membership@theiet.org.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your understanding.
For further information related to specific products and services, please visit our FAQs webpage.