Youngsters from a tiny school near Inverness have scooped a prestigious science award contested by more than 200 teams across the country.
Four children from 11-pupil Daviot Primary designed and built their own floating wave energy device to win a Junior Saltire Award at the competition final in Glasgow on Friday.
The victory was all the sweeter after a rail strike, which had threatened their chances of attending the event, was called off at the start of the week.
The P6-7 pupils represented their school in the finals at the Celebration of Science and Engineering at the Glasgow Science Centre.
They were desperate to win the award after Daviot Primary finished a close second last year, and were delighted to take home their Junior Saltire silver medals.
The competition is the junior version of the £10million Saltire Prize Challenge, created by the Scottish Government to accelerate the commercial development of wave and tidal energy technology.
The pupils’ small wave energy converter is composed of a plastic box weighed down with lead which rocks in the waves and causes a pendulum inside to swing and turn a dynamo to produce electricity.
The gadgets were tested at Edinburgh University’s FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility, the world’s most sophisticated ocean simulator.
The winning model was decided on the strength of electrical output and uniqueness of design, as well as the quality of the team’s oral presentation on their work for the project.
Andy McCallum, head teacher at the school, said: “We are all absolutely delighted and the children are ecstatic after the win. It went well with the FloWave simulator on Thursday and the presentation was absolutely brilliant.
“It is such a prestigious award and the talent on show was amazing. For us to come out on top, being such a small school, is both an amazing achievement and a real honour.”
The pupils’ trains to and from the venue had coincided with a planned 24-hour strike by members of the Rail Maritime and Transport union (RMT), but it was called off after four days of talks between Network Rail and the union.