With thanks to Director of Technology, Mr Thomas Barter

The Boys’ School recently joined many other local schools to compete in the qualifying heat for the Vector EPRO8 Challenge. EPRO8 stands for Engineering, Problem-solving and Innovation. Taking place over two and half hours, this was a complex engineering challenge, where each team was given a brief, along with a workstation with all the materials necessary to complete the challenge. The outcome, however, was solely reliant on each team making the right split second decisions and choosing materials appropriate to the task, all under the constraints of time as the clock ticked down! No pressure boys! Needless to say, it was both fun and very challenging!

This year, the Boys’ School entered six teams: two Year 5/6 teams and four Year 7/8 teams. They worked through challenges such as making a magic show using electro magnetism. In this, they had to figure out ways to use an electro magnet to make a coin disappear, or to turn a light on and off with a magic wand. In the ‘Wake up Ned’ challenge, they had to build a bed with a solar panel alarm to wake up someone at daybreak. The opportunities for the teams to work collaboratively to find solutions to these problems were fantastic – and the nature of the problems were of huge appeal making the task all the more enjoyable!

Our results were very good. In the Year 5/6 challenge, our boys took equal 4th, with the Year 6 team making it through to the semis on a point count back.

In our Year 7/8 group, all the teams placed in the top five, with our two Year 8 teams also qualifying for the semi-finals. 

Well done to all the boys, particularly the three teams moving on to the next stage of inter-school competition. Bring on the next challenge!

Tags

• Robotics

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