Science
Women in STEM Conference
On 2 August, 15 Year 9 students joined with hundreds of students from other schools at the Women in STEM Conference at the Melbourne Zoo. Various women working in STEM related fields shared their stories with the girls in the morning. In the afternoon, the students needed to work in a team to solve a real life problem linked to engaging and stimulating animals in a zoo environment.
Breakfast with a Scientist
On Tuesday 13 August, six VCE Physics students attended the annual Alliance of Girls' Schools Breakfast with a Scientist at Mentone Girls Grammar. We listened to the inspiring life story and fascinating work of Dr Gail Iles, a British Physicist. Gail spoke with passion about the setbacks she needed to overcome to attain her degree as a single parent. Gail completed her undergraduate studies over 9 years by correspondence. She then completed her PhD and has since worked in physics research in the south of France, Germany and now in Australia. Gail has pioneered discovery into new magnetic materials including testing materials in zero gravity conditions.
After narrowly missing selection to become an astronaut herself, Gail has worked for the European Space Agency training astronauts. She is currently lecturing in Physics and Engineering at RMIT and has written the course for the first Australian science degree specialising in Space Science to be offered next year at RMIT.
Science Week
With the theme of “Destination Moon”, Science Week was a massive week at Kilbreda. Keir Selfridge kicked the week off as only he can, with an exciting display of popping dry ice in canisters and multiple concoctions of overflowing elephant’s toothpaste in the lab!
On Tuesday, the Kilbreda Meeting Room was packed to see the show-down for the St Bede's and Kilbreda Year 12 Science Quiz. Organised by the Yr 12 STEM leaders, the competition was very, very close, with the boys taking the honours in the final couple of questions. We are hoping the trophy will return to Kilbreda in 2020! Also on Tuesday, the library classroom was filled with students reliving the Moon landing through the eyes of Wallace and Gromit in “A Grand Day Out”.
On Wednesday, students, under the guidance of Sue Grima, made the nourishing “Kilbreda Body” Coffee Scrub to take home and try out. Other students battled a tense 18 minutes to try to create the tallest, freestanding tower using 20 pieces of spaghetti, 1 metre of tape and 1 metre of string. The girls needed to position a marshmallow on the top of their tower. There were many “Aaaaah…NO!” moments in the last seconds of the challenge as…the marshmallow caused the beautiful tower to bend right over! The Year 12 STEM leaders were pipped by a millimetre by the rival Year 10s: Katie Avramopoulos, Charli Haas and Sarah Mc Kenna who built a beautiful and very stable tower with the winning height of 66.1 cm!
On Thursday, 120 multi coloured batches of slime were made in the lab! Finally, on Friday, 9 teams of students from Years 7-12 competed for glory in the Annual Science Quiz, with a group of talented Year 11s taking the honours.
A huge thank you to Coralene Crawford and Andrew Kerr for all of the additional preparation of materials and to the science staff for their generous supervision of the activities.
Big Science Competition
In May, an amazing 73 Kilbreda students took on the challenge of the Big Science Competition. This national competition is conducted over 50 minutes in which students respond to 30 complex multiple-choice questions. Congratulations to all of the students who entered the competition, as listed below. In many cases students who missed out on a credit award were just one or two correct responses away. The participants in 2019 were:
Of these students, 14 were awarded a Credit certificate, placing them in the top 25-30 % of entrants:
Year 7:
Sienna Hoult
Year 8:
Maddison Ball
Sonia Banik
Emily Cox
Alicia Henry
Isabel Humphrey
Lulu McCartney
Hannah Mullins and
Jennifer Ottapallil
Year 9:
Rachel Hoppe
Alice Merchant and
Alexia Ritzert
Year 10:
Grace Corbitt
Madi McCahon
Four students were placed in the top 10-15 % and were awarded a Distinction:
Year 9:
Amy Goodchild
Skye Hornidge
Marcella Malignaggi
Year 10:
Sophia Bryant
Thank you to all of the girls who participated in 2019. The competition will be open again for students in Years 7-10 in 2020.
Jacinta Devlin
Learning Leader: Science