Steam Club Term 1 is underway at Capalaba and the kids are absolutely enjoying building structures with newspapers.
 
In week one of ‘Newspaper Engineering’, we challenged the participants to build the tallest tower they could using only three sheets of newspapers and 1.2m of tape. But before the kids were challenge ready, they needed to learn the basics of rolling newspapers and constructing sturdy newspaper braces. These basics will help them with the future challenges that are set for them. Once the basics were learnt, the towers began to appear! The towers that were built were tall, sturdy and very impressive… One was almost as tall as the ceiling.
 
Weeks two and three were dedicated to learning the basics of building platforms. These platforms will be important for the bridge building challenge in the following weeks. We set that challenge that over two weeks, participants were to build a platform that sat 10cm off of the floor with 12 sheets of newspaper, 4.2m of tape and could hold the weight of up to 5 magazines. We began the lesson with the participants designing their platform and estimating how many magazines they thought their platform could hold. Once the design process was complete, it was up to the kids to then execute their design as best they could. Some participants finished their design and others didn’t. Many took the time to test their design and make it stronger. This is all very important for the coming weeks.
 
Well done to everyone for a great start to the term!

With 2019 coming to a close, we had a ball in both our STEAM and Intermediate Robotics Clubs.

It has been a busy eight weeks for our budding engineers in this terms Newspaper Engineering program. The sky was the limit with the tallest tower challenge, with our towering newspaper monuments reaching nearly two meters. Then it was back to the drawing board to plan and develop strong structures capable of holding piles of magazines.

We then expanded our knowledge (50cm to be exact) to build prototype truss bridges. We were blown away by the weight they could hold.  Our engineers created a newspaper and masking tape bridge that spanned 50cm and some managed to hold a whopping 1.5kg. Amazing!

All in all it was a great term and loads of fun. Who knew newspaper could be so strong?!

Our Intermediate Robotics Club battled it out with a robot that had to fit in a 20cm by 20cm square and battle it out in a 2m by 2m ring. The larger ring created a new problem for our sumo teams with establishing a search strategy becoming a priority.