The Flying Egg Service
During Term 1 the Year 8 STEM Classes tackled their first big project for 2019 – the Food Drop. In the face of natural disasters, food security is a priority for those in the disaster area. Students were presented with one such disaster scenario, flooding in the Kimberley region of Western Australia after record rainfall which left the town of Fitzroy Crossing cut off by flood waters. Students had to devise a way of transporting the food along the zip wire to the stranded citizens without damaging or losing any of the precious supplies.
This was a highly enjoyable and engaging task for all involved, as related by two Year 8 STEM students below:
"STEM is a subject, standing for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, which Year 8 students were lucky enough to do in 2019. This subject can include building robots, making a spaghetti tower, learning about electricity, or even doing science experiments. The first large activity we completed, however, was the food drop.
Even though the whole STEM class was excited to carry out the challenge, the first step was to do a bit of planning. After being placed in random groups, we read through our task. The whole class gasped as we slowly discovered that we weren't just dropping an egg, as predicted, we were inventing a reusable device that would drop an egg off of a zip line into a specific place without breaking!
Over the next few weeks, the class was abuzz with excitement, as plans started forming around us. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw diagrams being sketched, drop zones being made, and smiles spreading across students' faces.
As we were soon evaluating other groups, breathing with relief as our devices proved to be successful." - Hannah Griffiths
"Today in our class we were supposed to do an experiment called egg drop. And we were supposed to drop the egg on the drop zone without breaking the egg. It was supposed to be a well-designed egg drop.
We had papers, clips, tape, a cup, a string, and lastly straws… We were to choose wisely from the materials to create the best food drop and also the safest. Every single member of the class had different designs and ideas for their egg drop. Most of the people's food drop design was pretty good and the egg didn't break. But unfortunately some of them had failed and broke the egg but their design was still pretty good but not enough protection for the egg, or their drop zone wasn't really soft for the egg. Some of them cracked just a little but not all the way. And also the time was good for everyone to finish their food drop.
This task was really fun and exciting. We get to do our own thing and more, we all learnt from each other. Good ideas, working in a group and learning other people's ideas. I really enjoyed this task a lot and I think other people enjoyed it too.
After we finished the task we had a booklet to document about the task we did. All the questions were about the task and what did you do and how other people did on the task. We were watching other people's food drop and it was pretty good. This whole task was really enjoyable to watch and do, and a little scary because we didn't want the egg to fall and break. It was like kind of a challenge between us, or who's going to win." - Nagham Taha Alkreiz
