Science 

The Innovation Challenge 2021

Four year 9 students proudly represented KSC at The Innovation Challenge run by Engineer’s Without Borders. The program was run online over three days. Students were given a box of equipment, presented with engineering challenges, and mentored in small groups to engineer a solution to each challenge. The following paragraphs were written by the students who participated in the challenge. 

On Friday 26 October, Year 9 students from Koonung entered the Innovation challenge run by Engineers Without Borders Melbourne University. Our team consisted of four people and two mentors for each group, and we as a group and our two mentors all worked incredibly hard throughout the 3 days of the event.

Every participant played nine games, and gained a score based on how they performed, getting one point for a win, half a point for a draw and no points for a loss. Koonung finished 5th out of 20 schools that qualified for States. 

Each participant went through 3 main challenges and 3 mini challenges. Each challenges the consistency of sustainable solutions to solve an issue. Koonung finished 4th out of 12 schools around Victoria. 

The main challenges which were based on creating a final presentation, of what happened in the past 3 days. The 3 mini challenges which students participated in were creating projects which engineers do every day like biomedical engineering. We tried creating a biomedical arm which needed to be able to draw a wombat. This was judged by how neatly we could draw the wombat. The next challenge was creating a bridge which was tested for strength and judged for creativity. The final challenge was a water challenge of creating a water tower and a device/machine which transfers water while filtering the water when it’s being transferred to the other destination which were judged on the creativity of the build and how much water it could have filtered and if there is any leakage. 

To summarize what this innovation challenge it was basically a competition with different schools and split into groups of 4, we needed to play different types of engineering games (listed in the paragraph above and what we need to do). The winners of the challenges were announced on the last day. On the last day we didn’t win any of the games but we did get honourable mentions at the end. We can’t wait to do this again in the future and try to win for the school.

Zach, Benny and Billy

 Hello everyone. I am very fortunate and honoured that I had been given the opportunity to participate in the Innovation challenge. During the three-day program, I have learnt a lot of outside-book knowledge about engineering and had a wonderful experience with their nice mentors. There were several interesting activities and challenges during the program, such as Transport challenge (build a bridge with the specified requirement by using the material in the kit that is provided), Biomedical challenge (Build a ‘hand’ with the materials provided). There were still other enjoyable activities so let’s join the Innovation challenge next year if you want to discover and explore more fun activities!!! The main challenge is my favourite part throughout the whole program since you can learn the step-by-step process of creating a proposal and you can learn how to modify your ideas into achievable solutions. Innovation challenge is totally free and you can have your chance to win the prize!! If you are interested in science, maths or/and engineering, I would really recommend you join it next year!!! You would get an extraordinary experience…… At least I did!!!

Sky 

Helen Caine 

Science Domain Leader