Secondary: Eid Festival

Our Secondary students enjoyed the excitement of this week’s Eid Festival, with carnival rides tailored for older students and a fantastic range of food trucks.

After observing the fast throughout Ramadan, the celebration provided a well-earned opportunity for students to embrace Eid with their peers. The atmosphere across the College was vibrant, with students spending quality time with friends and making the most of this special occasion. It was a memorable way to celebrate Eid and reflect on its blessings together, all within the College grounds.

Adding a unique educational element to the festivities, Year 12 VCE and IB Physics students were given extended access to the carnival rides after the main event, allowing them to collect data without the usual queues. Equipped with stopwatches, students timed the rotations of the Scrambler and Hurricane, and estimated the physical dimensions of the Ali Baba ride, gathering valuable real-world data that would be difficult to

replicate in a classroom setting.

Back in class, students used this data to analyse the forces acting on riders at different points of each ride, including exploring why passengers feel heavier at the bottom of the Ali Baba’s vertical loop compared to the top.

Beyond the physics concepts, this investigation also provided valuable practice in data collection and analysis, including accounting for measurement uncertainty, identifying sources of error, and understanding that real-world results do not always align perfectly with theoretical predictions.