Rotary Club Design & Technology competition
On 11th March, we took part in the Rotary Club D & T Competition at The Bushey Academy. We arrived at 8.30am at Bushey Hall.
I was really excited, because I have never taken part in an event like this before and didn’t know what to expect.
Our task was to construct a beacon which should flash at least 3 times or more over the light house with an advertisement on it. The materials we got were: five sticks of wood, each 1 metre long, 10 screws, 4 elastic bands, moulding material, tin foil, 8 sheets of coloured card, sellotape, super glue, light bulb, battery, copper wire and garden wire.
The first half an hour we had to plan our task. My group consisted of 4 girls from Year 7: Amy, Vicki, Libby and me.
After we decided that we were going to use a pendulum as a mechanism to get the light flashing, we started with our construction. Two of us did the building of our light house and the other two kept track of what we were doing because we had to produce a portfolio as well.
Our team worked really well together, but after 2 ½ hours we realised that our flashing light wasn’t working at all. We were really nervous, because time was running out and we thought we would fail! We fiddled around with our construction in the hope that something would work out. Everyone was thinking so hard and it didn’t help at all that the judges kept telling us to use a different mechanism and use the 10 screws. We had used up all our materials except the 10 screws but we didn’t see any other way forward but to stick with our original idea.
Eventually one of us had the inspiring idea to attach the copper wire to the aluminium foil, which was wrapped around the moulding material, hung by three elastic bands to form a pendulum, so when the pendulum touched the garden wire the circuit was connected and disconnected. Even though the task was to get the light flashing 3 times, we managed 16 flashes in the testing - wow!!!!
When the judges announced the results, they started with third place, which created lots of tensions within the team members. Third place was awarded to Year 8 and 9 from St. Helen’s, second place was awarded to a team from Bushey Academy and the winner was: OUR TEAM. We beamed with joy and our screams were the loudest! We went to the front to collect our book vouchers and trophy, and still couldn’t believe that we won. What a day and what an experience!!!
