ConocoPhillips Science Experience - RMIT

During the Christmas holidays, a few Staughton students were given the opportunity to attend in a three day course at Melbourne's RMIT campus. Over the three days there were a range of interesting workshops, highlighting many things you can study at RMIT in the future. The main intention of the experience was to educate student about the different fields of learning relating to STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) to help guide students into a better understanding about their career path, and to hopefully inspire students who were unsure, like myself.

The first day was focussed around getting to know each other and understanding our schedule before we left to visit the Bundoora campus, at which we had a day full of biology and perception. My first workshop composed of learning how we perceive different foods. We learnt specific methods of testing foods after we partnered up before getting into the taste testing ourselves. We were provided two types of juices, one appears to be apple juice and the other seemed to be blackcurrant juice. We all recorded our results confidently. We were then informed that they were both apple juice and we felt so silly after reviewing the science behind it.

We then conducted an experiment where we tested if doctor's patients had influenza based off of a control variable. We went through a specific process, using artificial DNA, to determine if the patient was ill based on the colour it appeared in the test plate.

On Day Two we remained at the Melbourne campus where it was focused around chemistry and physics.

At the start of the day I went into a chemistry workshop. We played around with a lot of fun toys

with weird chemical properties and found criminals by picking up there fingerprints. This finished

up early so we went into a lecture room for a chemistry show where we were shown some fun

reactions with different chemicals.

We then went into a rocket-making workshop. We constructed a rocket out of paper and attached

it to a PVC rig. We stomped on a step, forcing air through the PVC launching the rocket to

mars (the table).

Afterwords we went into my personal favourite, the virtual experiences workshop. It was split into two parts. Large online game of agar.io, shared to a large screen showing the whole map. The second part was messing around with VR headsets and experiences. We either played beat saber or fought Rose, the robot boss.

Day Three was short and sweet. We went on an excursion to Yarra trams and learnt the tech policy

behind the training methods and how their schedule is programmed. We came back for an

overall science show by all our mentors before the ConocoPhillips Science Experience was

wrapped up.

This experience was well worth the time and effort. If you have the opportunity in the future to attend, I highly recommend you give this a go. The resources and experiences provided is definitely helpful in making important decisions for your future.

- Nathaniel Hoskins 10D