On a brisk Wednesday evening, 2 teams of CSKI students headed off to Clearview Primary to compete against 10 other teams in the EPro8 challenge.
The challenges were centred around engineering and included strong collaboration elements within the team. Each team was able to choose from 4 different tasks and play to their collective strengths to earn points. The tasks on this night included building a functioning grandfather clock with a pendulum, building an automatic electric car wash, building a rat wheel with functioning lights or building an alarm warning system for a thunderstorm. The tasks were broken down into segments where teams could earn points for completing segments and also completing the entire task too.
Our CSKI teams were strong contenders from the get-go with the year 8 team choosing to begin with the grandfather clock. After a solid start, they began to lose pace and progress with a few knock-backs and they decided they had gained all the points they could with that task and moved swiftly onto the rat wheel. The year 7 team began with the rat wheel and quickly moved to the 1st place spot which they held for the majority of the competition. Upon completion of their rat wheel, they moved on to the thunderstorm alarm – completing one of the more difficult segments which had them develop a way for the alarm to sound to noise.
As the time wound down, the year 8 team found themselves neck and neck with another school in the race for third place. They worked furiously to complete the next segment, pressing their buzzer with seconds to spare. However, so too did their tightest competition. We waited with bated breath as the judge visited the other school first and sighed with relief when he did not award them any points, this left us with a tie for third. He moved to the CSKI year 8 team, checking their contraption thoroughly and after what seemed like an eternity, he awarded them the well-deserved points to secure third place!
Finishing in both first and third is a huge accomplishment and sees both teams head to the next competition round. We cannot be more proud!
A special thanks to the parents who provided transport and support on the night.
