Smiths Hill High School students Angel Acosta, Lars Ashton Wagner, Max Blacklock, Rhys Bollard, Til Chevalier, Dane Conklin, Atticus Crook, Izakk Curtin, Aidan Dempsey, Finn Dempsey, Ajdin Dozo, Matthew Exposito, Cooper Finnegan, Kane Gardiner, Ronan Gracias, Addyson Gray, Byron Hastie, Max Hinde, Ben Howard, Eloise Jones, Neil Joseph, Kat Laing, Evan Murphy, William Murray, Ronin Naumovski, Innocent Nwali, Sebin Park, Dylan Powell, Alex Schmid, Jayanth Senthilmani Venkatesh, Robert Shannon, Ciaran Stuart, Abdul Tubbal, Amaan Vakil, William Ye and William Zhang took home the National Championship in Science and Engineering. Photo: Zoe Cartwright.
Thanks to a combination of brains, hard work and team cohesion, Smiths Hill High School students have blitzed the country to win the National Science and Engineering Championships.
Thirty-two Year Nine and 10 students from the school participated in the challenge.
Split into eight groups of four they were assigned tasks such as building a bridge out of balsa wood.
Trolleys of increasing load were rolled over the bridges to test their weight-bearing capacity – once a team’s bridge collapsed, the team was out.
Regional, state and national levels of the competition each featured a series of unique challenges to test the students’ ability to apply concepts from maths, physics and engineering.
At regional and state level they were given the challenges ahead of time – but at nationals anything was on the table.
Smiths Hill students won at every level, but they said teamwork was the most important skill.
Deane Gardiner said the tasks often looked more difficult than they turned out to be when everyone worked together.
“The challenges were surprisingly easy sometimes,” he said.
“The instructions seemed complicated but when we came together as a team we could figure it out surprisingly fast and get into it.”
A point of pride was defeating the prestigious James Ruse High School not once, but twice.
Smiths Hill knocked James Ruse out at the NSW challenge, however, they were given a second chance to compete at the national competition when the Northern Territory representative school pulled out.
Team captain Ronan Gracias said tough competition made their win all the sweeter.
“If I was to describe it with one word I would say ‘surreal’,” he said.
“We did have a few setbacks on the day of nationals; we were surprised by a couple of the challenges that were new to us.
“When they announced it was between us and James Ruse for first and second, then announced first place for us, we were shocked.”
It was all friendly competition though.
Izakk Curtin rated the camaraderie and sportsmanship displayed by all schools on the day.
“It was really interesting getting to meet students from all over the country and talk to them and develop relationships with other schools; it was really fun,” he said.
The majority of the students who took part in the challenge said they were keen to study the sciences at university, and about half were interested in pursuing engineering.
All of them said the experience reinforced their interest in pursuing STEM.
Teacher Jack Doyle, who travelled with the group, credited their hard work.
He said he thought people might be surprised at the technical knowledge the students had to display under pressure.
“In one activity the students had to build an eco-house which had to withstand three challenges – capturing water, standing up to a simulated cyclone, and bearing weight,” Jack said.
“They get points for the amount of material they use, so if they use fewer materials and have a lighter design they get more points.
“The aim is for students to pull knowledge from across science, maths, technology and engineering and apply it in the moment, to link the theory they do in school to a real-world application.
“I was absolutely blown away by the kids’ performance, it was incredible.”
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