Scotch College

Reflections on the Victorian Schools Science - Engineering challenge

Thirty skilled Science and Design Technology students were privileged to represent Scotch at the 2006 Science–Engineering competition. We were split into small groups of three or four people and had to complete Science and Design Technology tasks in competition with every other school. The tasks included building a mini-chair out of icy-pole sticks that was to be thrown from 10m, and building a bridge using a limited supply of balsa wood, and having a 10kg block drive across.

The first competition was held at Victoria University in Werribee. Scotch was ranked last until the last five minutes of the competition, when we managed to improve our score quickly to the point that we won. This was quite exciting for us, since this was our first attempt in this competition. We were amazed at how well we performed.

Winning the regional competition meant that we were eligible to go on to the ‘Super Challenge’. This was held a couple of months after the first competition at La Trobe University in Bundoora. The Super Challenge meant that we were competing with the best schools in the state.

Assuming that we had previously completed all the group tasks, we were all thinking about how good that first place trophy would look when we took it back to school. Unfortunately our dreams were put out of focus for a while, as we found out that we were not allowed to work on any of the tasks that we had previously completed. However, Scotch quickly sprinted to a lead on the ranking board, but by the end of the day we had slowed down to third place, meaning that we had just missed out on the opportunity to go to the nationals. But we did bring home a nice trophy for our cabinet.

We all thoroughly enjoyed both days and would like to thank Mrs Michelle Linossier, Mr John Flynn and Mr Aart Hoebee who organised and supported us during the series.

John Abrahams
Year 9