PPMA BEST and the STEM day
On Tuesday 16th November Year 8 students participated in a virtual STEM morning. Through a live stream students meet Engineers. The students were given two Challenges. Working to a tight deadline, students built an Eco Factory Roller Loader, this was a marble run to safely move a product from A to B, the slower the better. Well done to the winning group, Orla, Emily, Nina, Lili and Alisa.
The second challenge was called BEST Pitch, teams had to brainstorm and come up with an idea for an invention or piece of tech, and then present their ideas to the others in their form group. The winning idea was a Car for All.
Review of the day – By Darcy Smith
Our day was so much fun!!! It started with a presentation by a couple of people who have careers in STEM. I think the most interesting part was the video of the robot that one of people owned, I didn’t know that you could just own a robot! After that was our first challenge! In our groups, we had to make what was essentially a marble run. The marble had to take the longest time possible using only the materials provided. It was surprising how difficult that was. The longest time in my form was around 7 seconds which we all thought was impressive, but we later found out that a group in another form had done it in an incredible 20 seconds!!! After break, we started our second challenge of the morning. We had to come up with an idea of an invention and nominate someone to give a 40 second pitch of it, to our class. Everyone had fun with this, and all groups had brilliant ideas at the end of it. My group came up with the idea of a car that anybody could drive even if they were disabled which we all thought was a good idea. The teacher judging must have agreed as we were the winners of our form, and our idea was about to be judged by a different teacher to find the winners of the entire year. One of the men who presented the PowerPoint at the beginning announced the winner and we were delighted to hear that my group had won!!! That day was so much fun and a big thanks goes to Mrs Warburton for organising all of it!
