Science & Technology at Ruskin Park

The Verniers Society is a group of Engineers who hold a competition each year where students enter their Power Point displays on “How Things Work”.   All of our Grade 5 and 6 students made a presentation on their choice and had to explain how their item worked. We selected four presentations from all of the students and entered them into the competition. We sent Maddie’s on “How Animations Work”, Jade, Michalie & Mel’s on ‘How a Thermometer Works’, Anthony, Zac’s and Jayden’s on “How a Tornado Works” and Ashley’s on “How a Piano Works”.   Each one of these was fantastic and the students put extra effort during their lunch times to improve their work for the competition.

Ashley has been announced as one of the finalists and has been invited to attend the luncheon with her mother and myself for the presentation of the awards!  Another fantastic effort!  Congratulations Ashley!

Congratulations to a group of four Year 5 students who put in a lot of time over Term 2 to build an entry for this years Engquest Competition.  Ashley, Emily, Jacqueline and Kate discussed, designed, built, tested and rebuilt their model during their lunch times.  This year’s task was a very difficult one as they had to build a working model of a piece of water playground equipment that recycled water and shows awareness of playground safety issues.

After looking at Stephanie’s Power Point display showing how the Romans used an Archimedes screw to raise water, they decided to use this principle for their playground equipment.  It was a very difficult task to build one, but after many trials and errors, they came up their final model. The water is drawn up from a pool by the Archimedes screw and it then falls down onto a waterwheel which spins and the water falls back into pool below.   The equipment is situated next to a vegetable patch so that at the end of the day, the water can be syphoned onto the school vegetables. The water is filled each time it is to be used from a water tank.

Robotics

Last year two of our students, Sean & Birttany, won $5000 worth of Lego Robotics for the school with their entry in the Verniers Power Point Competition.
This year Sean, along with Daphne, Jennifer, Jake and Declan built a robotic cat and entered the Junior Robotic Dance Competition.  Sean programmed the cat to dance to "Kung Fu Fighter."  The robot had to dance within a 3 square metre dance floor.  They solved many design problems and came up with a workable design just in time for the competition.  They were rewarded for their efforts by winning the silver medal and a chance to compete in the Australian Championships in Sydney.

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Solar Boats

We have had a lot of success with our Solar Boats in the past and our teams have competed in the Australian Championships all over Australia – to Sydney in 2002 where we became Australian Champions, to Adelaide in 2003 and Perth in 2004.  All have been very valuable experiences for our students.

(click on pictures to enlarge)