Rising to the Challenge: STEM Students Engineer Success

Rising to the Challenge: STEM Students Engineer Success

On Monday 1 June, 25 STEM interested Year 10 students, joined in a ‘building a crane’ workshop with Adelaide University’s Dr Navodana Rodrigo and her team. 

Our students were presented with the challenges and specifications with which civil engineers and construction managers build structures in our world. Dr. Rodrigo gave them their specifications for the cranes to be built. For example, the jib (boom) could only be a maximum of 80cm, some counterweights had to be considered, otherwise the crane tips over, and the diameter of the tower couldn’t be greater than 8cm. The students did SAC proud as they enthusiastically went to work. In groups of 3 to 4 they build their cantilever cranes using newspapers, masking tape, measuring tape and scissors only. The University lecturers were impressed with our students as they only had 5 minutes to design and create their crane and then only 35 minutes to construct their designs. They worked collaboratively and non-stop under the time constraints and, although not perfect, all groups had a crane ready for testing.  When the time came to test whether the crane could stand by itself, nervousness was replaced with laughter and joy as some cranes were more successful than others!  Their crane’s jib strength, durability and stability were tested in the last 5 minutes by Dr Rodrigo and her team and the proud winners with their triangle support approach of the jib were Tinaya Dias, Abby Lee , Ava Koch and Claire Htun.

The effort and dedication of all our students were applauded by the presenters, and all were rewarded with a morning snack afterwards.  All in all, a wonderful creative and enjoyable hour was spent in the Physics lab learning about cranes.

Ms Nicoletta Romanelli and Ms Magda van Aardt
Teachers

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