McKinnonNEWS

SCIENCE

NATIONAL SCIENCE WEEK 2022

We were so excited to finally celebrate National Science Week onsite at McKinnon last week. National Science Week is Australia’s annual celebration of science and technology, which aims to raise the profile and increase the public understanding and appreciation of science, innovation, engineering and technology, and their role in maintaining and improving our society, economy and environment. 

During the week we hosted a variety of events and incursions as well as daily competitions to engage students in Science, including:

  • Guessing how many rubber bands it would take to implode a 5kg watermelon and correctly relating it to Hooke’s Law; 
  • Applying engineering design skills to build a fleet of paper planes that would go the furthest distance and have the longest hang time;
  • Testing our scientific knowledge in the Daily Compass Quiz;
  • Applying our understanding of acid-base chemistry to make our own bath bombs;
  • Learning about animal conservation;
  • Applying our creativity and problem solving skills to build the tallest tower or innovative designs using wooden planks.

Much fun was had by all. 

A big congratulations to our prize winners below:

The Daily Quiz:

Alyssa Nikolakopoulos (Year 12), Alex Do (Year 8), Matilda Ma (Year 7), Octavian Udriste (Year 7) and Nadya Mapitiya (Year 11).

Alyssa Nikolakopoulos
Alex Do
Matilda Ma
Octavian Udriste
Nadya Mapitiya
Alyssa Nikolakopoulos
Alex Do
Matilda Ma
Octavian Udriste
Nadya Mapitiya

 

The Ultimate Paper Plane Competition:

Longest flight: Atharv Desai, Aryan Rokhade, Prince Tiwari and Xavier Grigo (Year 7) with a distance of 18 metres.

Atharv Desai
Aryan Rokhade
Prince Tiwari
Xavier Grigo
Atharv Desai
Aryan Rokhade
Prince Tiwari
Xavier Grigo

Longest hang time: Zac Finnigan and Hanon Abraham (Year 7).

Zac Finnigan
Hanon Abraham
Zac Finnigan
Hanon Abraham

 

The Big Watermelon Experiment:

Matilda Ma (Year 7) won with the closest guess of 265 rubber bands. It took 267!

 

Charlie Robbie (Year 7) for his explanation of Hooke’s Law: the force required to stretch an elastic material is proportional to the distance of extension of the material. This means that if the watermelon is large, then it will take fewer small elastics to implode.

Matilda Ma
Charlie Robbie
Matilda Ma
Charlie Robbie

Thank you to all who took part and a big thank you to the Science team and other staff that assisted in running events and supervising. We can’t wait to celebrate again in 2023!

 

Cherie Marks

Head of Science