This month, Year 7, 8 and 9 students are participating in a Mars Rover competition, in honor of the Perseverance rover landing on February 18th.
The Science department is hosting the competition alongside Mr. Williams, the head of design and technology. Mrs. Nall and Mr. Williams will be judging all of the contestant’s contributions.
Students are allowed to work in groups of 4 and have been giving the 3 options:
1. Design a rover and make a mission plan.
2. Build a model rover and make a mission plan.
3. Create a moving rover and a mission plan.
Once all contestant’s rover’s are judged the following awards will be presented: best virtual model, best ‘in person’ model and best mission plan.
The winners will be announced in the end of term assembly. They will receive $25 vouchers and other smaller ‘space explorer’ contributes from Mrs. Nall. The students have been assigned this task as homework and the deadline is Friday 2nd April for year 7 and 8 students, whereas year 9 students have until 5th of April.
Mr. Williams recently 3D printed an example model of the Mars rover for students to be inspired by. It is on a display opposite to the elevators on the second floor for all to view.
We interviewed Mr. Williams about the event.
When asked about his 3D printing experience with the model rover he said “The printing time was around 6.5 days as I printed it on the Ultimaker S5 with a smaller than usual nozzle on a very fine print.”
Mr. Williams detailed to us how he was able create the model “The files for the model were originally from NASA, I modified it a little in Tinkercad so that it would need less supports and also so that it looked more accurate to how people think the Curiosity Mars Rover looks.”
Mr. Williams also touched on his love for all things space! “I also have a coin from NASA that is made of the same metal used in Curiosity.My aim for my model was to act as a showpiece of both 3D printing and also my love of space.”
We asked Mr. Williams about his experience running this competition in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. “If we were not in COVID learning conditions the students in year 7 would have designed their own function rover based on the Sphero RVR, combining this with FPV cameras and headsets and also drones to match The Perseverance Rover”
While Mr. Williams ran this event we asked him what he would have done if he were competing “If I had my own mission to Mars I would design a robot that would build and tend a bio-dome like the Eden project for growing on Mars, as I feel that before we consider moving to Mars we need to have established better systems for supporting life as well as making it more interesting, and also so that animals would be happier there as well.”
We asked what he would name the rover “If I were to name this mission I think that “Nimoy” would be a fitting name for such a mission to bring growth to a new world.”
We also interviewed Mrs. Parry who said, “Due to covid, we have missed out on a lot of practical work during the last year, so this was a chance for pupils to move away from their screens, and harness their creativity, design and problem solving skills to come up with a unique and innovative design for their own Mars rover.”
Mrs. Parry also hopes “the challenge will inspire interest in learning more about the future of space exploration”.
Moving forward there will be more competitions inspired by students, the school is keen to support their creativity and ideas. There’s new challenges coming up including this coding one.
Here’s the link: https://www.codegameschallenge.org/public/About.aspx
Have fun exploring!
Writers: Irina Wilderotter, Molly Broad, Mathilda Dempsey and Iris Voinea
Editor: Minna Abdel-Gawad
Comentarios