SCIENCE STUDENTS STEP UP
Saint Stephen’s science students will be ready to repeat previous successes in the upcoming Newcastle University Science and Engineering Challenge
SAINT Stephen’s College science students have got their neutrons in order and donned their chemistry caps at one of Australia’s toughest science challenges.
Year 9 and 10 students are aiming to win the 2019 Newcastle University Science
and Engineering Challenge after taking top honours in the regional section for the past two years.
Their involvement is all thanks to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths), a program run at the college as part of the team projects subject.
Last year, the group of 32 students took home the
trophy with pride.
Head of science Iain Taylor said the students effectively completed practical engineering-based activities by honing the skills through classroom activities.
This proved invaluable for the 2018 competition, and should secure some high scores in the coming competition.
“STEAM encourages and challenges our students to problem solve, which will make them well positioned to meet growth skills areas of problem solving, and careers in STEM,” he said.
Before competing, students were broken into eight groups of four and each group was given a different task.
The tasks ranged from designing bionic hands to completing sign-language symbols, building towers to withstand an earthquake, designing a bridge able to bear weight and encoding a message.
“This type of competition is ideal as it allows students to become critical thinkers,” said Mr Taylor.
“I am extremely proud of this achievement and hope to continue this success into the future.”
Challenge students recently presented their work to Year 4to-6 students and will do so again this month to Year 1-to-3 students.
The show covers many different areas of science.
The college’s group names are: Hydrogen Bubbles, Eggsperts, Lightsabers, Shock Sisters, Elephant’s Toothpaste and Liquid Nitrogen.
Students have presented their science show to many local schools and some of the college’s science ambassadors will travel to China at the end of the year to present and take part in workshops.
Saint Stephen’s College also hosted a science expo, which featured budding junior and senior scientists.
Highlights included:
Year 2 students building bridges and programming.
Years 5 and 6 students creating a marshmallow catapult, a virtual reality zone, eyeball and pluck dissections and interactive physics displays.
“The most popular event of the evening was run by Year 10 students, where 100 students made their very own magnetic and thermal slime and got to take it home with them,” said Mr Taylor.