Students Up For The Challenge

Kingaroy SHS teammates Ethan Gunn, 15, and Cas Lewandowski, 14, assemble their mini bridge

Nanango State High School's winning team

Nicola Brittain, 14, and Brianna Barron, 14, collect the trophy for the overall winning school on behalf of Nanango

May 10, 2012

Students from eight local schools gathered at Nanango today to test their science and engineering skills in a day-long competition presented by the University of Newcastle.

The Year 9 and 10 students competed against each other in both full-day and half-day challenges.

They were awarded points for each activity with the school with the most points at the end of the day declared the winner.

This year’s winner was Nanango State High School with an impressive 1287 total points.

Runners-up were Murgon State High School (908 points) and Kingaroy State High School (847 points).

Other schools to compete in the 2012 Science and Engineering Challenge were Yarraman P-10, Goomeri P-10, Proston P-10, Wondai P-9 and Toogoolawah State High School.

Murgon State High School's winning Catapult team. From left, Brittany Holding, Samuel Dennien, Kiaowa McAninley and Geoffrey Kinsella

Winners of the individual challenges were:

• Helter Skelter Shelter – Nanango State High School afternoon team

• ElectraCity – Murgon State High School morning team

• Puff Puff Golf – Nanango State High School morning team

• Back To The Future II – Nanango State High School morning team

• Catapult – Murgon State High School

• Hover Frenzy – Nanango State High School

• Mission To Mars – Yarraman P-10

The day culminated with the Gold Fever challenge where each team was asked to construct a small bridge which was then tested with different weights until it failed.

The winner of this event was Kingaroy State High School whose bridge failed under four weights.

Three weights pass across Kingaroy State High School's bridge smoothly ... the winning run!

Four weights caused the bridge to buckle