STEAM NEWS

This term students in Year 7 STEAM have been undertaking a series of challenges that have been aimed around developing their understanding of the Engineering Design Process.  These challenges have included building Marshmallow Towers, Slippery Slides and Rube Goldberg Machines. 

Jodie Purches – Innovations and Excellence

Bixie Woolford Report

For the past two weeks, the Year Sevens have participated in a Slippery Slide challenge in STEAM class. The rules were that each team had to construct a water slide made of recycling items from our own houses. The waterslide had to be 30-60cm tall and include three twists or loops. At least two different sections of the slide had to have different slopes or angles. The waterslide had to fit six people (marbles) and 250ml of water through the slide. The people had to stay on the slide at all times without flying off or crashing into each other, and they had to have some way to get into the slide and a ladder or stairs leading up to the platform. There also had to be some form of collection pool at the bottom of the slide that the marbles would land in after going through the slide. The slide had to be constructed completely out of household materials, although tape, hot glue, and PVA glue were provided. We had to plan out what materials we were going to use, how we were going to create the slide, and what we were going to call our slide beforehand. Everything had to be waterproof so that water could flow through it, which proved to be quite a challenge using only recycling. It was a ton of fun, with some teams successfully passing all six marbles through the slide with no difficulty and some teams ending in spilled water all over the floor. No matter what the end result was, we all learnt a ton about momentum based on whether or not the marble could make some of the turns.