11 Jul 2018
On Wednesday 4th July, 2018, 25 enthusiastic science students from Year 9 and 10 made the journey to the Kingswood Campus of Western Sydney University for the Science and Engineering Challenge. Running over two days, the competition involved groups of students from 16 diverse schools, ranging from public, academic selective and independent schools.
The activities, all STEM based, engaged students and relied on them using their skills in communication, collaboration and problem solving. All the activities required multiple rounds of trial and error to progress forward and win the challenge.
Activities included:
- Confounding Communications, where students learnt how to communicate with each other using various colour light transmitted through optical fibres.
- ElectraCITY, where students had to provide power to ‘towns’ on a large board with different quality cables.
- Grasping at Straws, where students designed and built a ‘bionic hand’ from PVC pipe, string, straw and timber coffee stirrers.
- Helter Skelter Shelter, where students constructed a tall earthquake-proof tower using basic materials, sound engineering principles and ingenuity.
- Stringways where students develop rail networks that convey trains in the most efficiently.
- Mission to Mars, where student constructed a vehicle which a suspension system to quickly traverse an undulating surface.
- Flat-Pack. where student designed and built a model table and chair that was able to support the weight of up to 2kg.
- Bridge, where students collaborated to build a small bridge from balsa, pins, tape, paddle pop sticks and string.
