Science

STEM Week 2023

It has been a super busy STEM Week this year. Stretching over eight days,  the STEM activities started in Week 2 with the EngGirls STEM Challenge, with Year 9 girls running a STEM workshop with the Year 4 and 5 students. 

This year the EngGirls set the students a design challenge of making earthquake proof buildings which proved to be quite a formidable task.  However, it was pleasing that quite a number of buildings were able to withstand the earthquakes generated by the shake table. A number of girls in Year 9 also participated in the RMIT STEM Leaders program, where students further developed leadership skills and participated in a workshop learning about land surveying. 

Following this, STEM Week then launched with the Technology and Food Studies STEM Fair. Students participated in amazing food experiments, completing robot challenges and building spinning tops. 

On the following Monday, there was more STEM fun with amazing science experiments in the CPA plaza. With experiments such as crazy slime, digging for dinosaurs, psychology games, guessing the mass of the Giant pumpkin, chromatography flowers and oobleck, it was an action packed session for the STEM ambassadors. This year, over 95 students from Year 7 to 12 signed up to be STEM ambassadors and worked over five lunchtime to design activities and experiments for the fairs. As well being a great time with friends, participating in extracurricular activities such as STEM ambassadors counts towards many Universities early entry programs. 

Opportunities to participate in further STEM activities continues, with the Earth and Environmental Science Olympiad, International Chemistry Quiz, EngGirls Ecodesign and the soon to be launched Young Engineers. 

If you would like to further information about how to get involved, please email Dr Adele Hudson, ahudson@aitkencollege.edu.au

Dr Adele Hudson

Head of Faculty – Science