Students from Goulburn High School's Year 7 and 8 enrichment science class battled it out against each other last week at the Mini STEM Hook Day.
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It involved students understanding the iSTEM process and competing against one another in small groups.
Teacher and organiser Belinda McLean said the idea behind the iSTEM process was for students to come up with a design and then evaluate their design to see where improvements could be made before making a final recording of their results.
The day was run by STEM Industry School Partnerships (SISP) and students faced different challenges throughout the day.
These included:
- On Target: Modify a paper cup so it can zip down a line and drop a marble on the target. Students has to access factors such as speed of the device coming don the zip line and the remote release of the marble how it was going to hit the target.
- Slender Tower: Students were required to construct the tallest tower possible only using five sheets of A4 paper and it needed to balance for 30 seconds. Students were inspired by the tall building with small footprint from 432 Park Avenue New York.
- Paper Gyrocopter: Students were required to construct a gyrocopter with the slowest glide rate using only a piece of A4 paper. The challenge was inspired by how gyrocopters use a free spinning rotor as a wing during flight.
- Paper Bridge: construct a bridge using a sheet of A4 paper that was 25cm apart, to see how many weights the bridge could hold. The paper could be folded or twisted but must be able to hold the masses without falling off.
Students were scored on the following factors when completing their challenges including ability to work as a team and evaluate the iSTEM process:
- Paper Bridge: The number of masses supported by the bridge, the distance between the bridge was 30cm
- Slender tower: the height of the tower was greater than one metre and stood for 30 seconds
- Paper Gyrocopter: the time taken for the gyrocopter to hit the ground
- On Target: created a workable and functioning zip line, the marble was able to hit the target.
The team which finished first was Rashad, Lachlan, Nic and Baedon.
Second was Frey, Joshua, Abigail and Lucas Wybrow.
In third was Abigail, Madeline, Chloe and Makayla.
Ms McLean thanked SISP staff Ingrid Clements, Louise Bennett and Camilla Staff for their organisation and planning of the day's challenges and the prizes presented to the students.
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