Mathematical Engineering Week at UniSA

During Week 8 of Term 3, Eric Hoang, Trung Bui, Silas Koo and I visited the University of South Australia Mawson Lakes Campus for Engineering Week after an invitation from Miss Frost and the Maths Department. We learnt about the main disciplines of engineering; electrical, electronic, civil, mechanical and mechatronic, and their roles in modern day society.

We spent the week with other Year 10s from schools across South Australia and were separated into groups of five. We spent the first day getting to know each other in various group building exercises. We started by constructing a building out of pasta and marshmallows, learning about the tension and compression capabilities of the materials and our group members along the way.

After lunch that day, we visited the civil engineering facility where we observed first-hand the process by which water is transported through pipes and how strong concrete is made. On the following Tuesday, my group and I had the opportunity to learn about basic circuitry and electrical engineering in the process. Our exploration of breadboards and conversion of higher voltages to lower ones proved to be tough for every group.

After this less than fun experience, we started on our group assignment, producing windmills. Our goal for the week was to pump an exact amount of water in the quickest time. This had us taking into account gear ratio and angle of attack for the blade.

On Wednesday, we learnt the basics of soldering, where we produced basic circuit boards, and open and closed looped robots. This proved to be the most entertaining event with all our groups, as we competed in racing our programed robots.

The Thursday before presenting our windmills, we looked at the wind tunnels the campus housed in their mechanical engineering facility. We tested our windmills on this machine.

Finally, we recorded our results from the windmills on the wind tunnels that Friday morning, presenting to all the parents, staff and peers the outcomes of the week-long assignment.

My group was fortunate enough to place third out of the nine groups and were awarded with a brand-new set of breadboards. Overall, we have gained new knowledge on the evolution of the job market as engineers and the skills required to partake in them. We had lots of fun and hope that 2018’s Year 10s can be fortunate enough to experience such a wonderful event.

By Ronald Vincent Ravida Junior