Gloucester High School have double the reason to celebrate after winning the annual MidCoast Science and Engineering Challenge in Taree on Friday, May 20, and qualifying for the state competition in Newcastle.
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The one day event involves a range of activities designed to challenge year 10 students.
Planning and construction were part of the tasks given to the teams who needed to create things like a bridge and then have it tested numerous times to see how well it would carry weight.
Due to school numbers Gloucester only managed to pull together a group of 25 including some year 9 students, despite the average group size from other schools, being 32.
Numbers didn’t hinder the students ability to rise to the challenge. Overall the team scored 1078.52 points making them eligible for the Super Challenge in Newcastle.
Their best performance was in the designing and building of a small prototype hovercraft. After building it out of balsa wood, polystyrene, masking tape, motors, fans they had to test it on a track.
The Gloucester team had a very successful time of 7.5 seconds to cover the 10 metres in the speed trial which has set a state record.
Most schools are given a list of the activities they will be participating in on the day at least a week or two before the event. Giving the students time to think about to go about tackling the challenge.
Gloucester High School students were given theirs during the bus trip to Taree.
“Their teamwork was exceptional,”says Gloucester High School science teacher Judy Pickett.
The event is run by the University of Newcastle and aims to encourage students to consider a future in science and engineering.
The challenge began in Gosford in 2000 with 500 year 10 students to encourage them to see science, technology, engineering and mathematics as fun and very rewarding. It has grown into a National competition and is now being held in Singapore and the UK.
Gloucester High School will be heading to the university at the end of August to compete against the other regional winners.