Flora, flooding, and foreign language projects win at NIWA

Our Year 8 Boys’ School students impressed the judges at this year’s Auckland NIWA Science and Technology Fair, securing a string of top prizes across categories ranging from the living world to technology and human behaviour. Eighteen of the cohort’s best projects were selected to represent the school at the Science Symposium earlier in Term 3.

Three projects stood out with first place finishes. Jesse Heads earned recognition in the Living World category with ‘The Babylon Blueprint’, an investigation into how plants influence their environment. His research found that greenery significantly alters air quality affecting carbon dioxide, humidity, and temperature, though not all outcomes proved beneficial.

In the Technology category, Nic Smith’s project ‘Go With the Flow’ offered a creative response to every Auckland homeowner’s biggest worry—flooding. By experimenting with siphons, he demonstrated how these simple, effective systems could both stop floodwaters and redistribute them to reduce damage.

Meanwhile, in Human Behaviour, Jordan Metcalfe took inspiration from his great-grandmother’s World War II diary, written in Nazi-occupied Holland. His project, ‘Man vs Machine’, compared the translation accuracy of artificial intelligence against human translators. His results showed humans outperformed AI when translating from photos, but AI fared much better when provided with digital text in the original language.

Second place awards were also secured across a variety of categories: Secrets of Lift (Nate Savidan), The Pulse behind the Play (Anthony Li), Power Up: Unleashing the Power of Plants (Darren Lin & Ollie Gordon), Sugary Shortbread (Christian Smidt), Does Plastic Trump Paper? (Max Gaskell & Alex Morris), and Rainfall Rinse or Dirty Downpour? (Chenhan Ouyang). These projects demonstrated the students’ wide-ranging curiosity and ability to apply scientific thinking to real-world challenges.

Additionally, seven projects received Highly Commended recognition, and a total of thirteen Special Prizes from external sponsors were collected by Saint Kentigern Boys’ School students. The depth of inquiry and creativity on display was well reflected in the range of topics explored and the thoughtful lines of questioning pursued. Continued exploration of ideas with real-world impact will no doubt carry forward our nation’s reputation for a bit of Kiwi ingenuity.