Year 9 Science Engineering Project

The problem that we were required to solve was that many buildings weren’t strong enough to withstand earthquakes as seen with the 2015 Nepal earthquake that destroyed many homes and were struggled to be rebuilt in the aftermath as in 2 years only 5% of the homes had been rebuilt. Our task was to build a scale model structure that could withstand a major earthquake that would be simulated through a shake table. When building we were required to use the design thinking process which started off with a 50min design sprint where we had to build and plan the structure in the set time that would fit all requirements. We had a $60 budget and our structure would be made out of spaghetti ($1/stick) and blutack ($1/g). Our next step was to research and brainstorm potential designs and different structural supports that we improve our design. We then constructed our structure which wasn’t very structurally supportive and didn’t have any room in the budget which is why we then started a new structure that actually turned out quite well. It was then put on the shake table where it survived and was destroyed after a 100g weight was added.

Our original design that didn’t have very good structural support

Some changes that I would’ve done in terms of the process in the future is to maybe spend the time planning our design a lot better and looking at many potential different designs that are much stronger in terms of the structural supports. Reasons why I would improve the ideating stage is because our original design that we were planning to do was not very strong in terms of structural supports which affected our whole structure as it couldn’t generally hold itself up. Looking back now we should’ve looked at multiple potential designs that are slightly different but still had the same concepts with cross braces, equal distribution and triangles as they’re the things that supported the structure the best. In terms of collaboration it definitely had its flaws as our communication wasn’t the best in terms of what our individual jobs were as we couldn’t all build at the same time as we’d get in each others way. Although we also all had our strengths as Paula was good at the ideating stage, while Kate was the one who did most of the problem solving while I did most of the prepping for the build.

It was a highly enjoyable project that helped us connect to real world problems while collaborating with others

Health wellbeing expo

Do you know what ‘me time’ is? When was the last time you had some?

For our health wellbeing expo our task was to identify a problem that teenagers face that can affect their mental health/wellbeing and to find a solution/strategies to enhance wellbeing/raising awareness and to provide strategies to overcome the issue. My group decided for our focus to be on taking time for yourself and to do what you enjoy.

To me taking time for yourself means to be able to have time to reflect on your feelings and to be self-aware. Some things that you could do that involve taking time for yourself include hanging out with friends, doing a hobby/sport such as soccer or art or even something as chill as reading a book or sleeping. But for others it may mean something different according to Jessica Kasparian it doesn’t always include the things that you enjoy doing such as going to doctors appointments or cleaning the house. Although there’s always one general consensus between all of the definitions that it’s about taking care of yourself.

While doing this project some things that we’d learned include the benefits of taking time for yourself. A study completed by Kelton global surveyed over 1,000 people in the U.S.A about how they view self care, how different generations engage in self-care and what stops them from having time for self-care. According to these studies 40% feel that they rarely have time for themselves and 45% of parents and 32% of people without kids don’t have time for self-care and if they do have time then they feel guilty for not doing something. WHO have also now diagnosed burnout as a real medical diagnosis showing the significance of how important it is to take time for yourself.

A piece of advice that I would give to young people about taking time for themselves is to not overfill your schedule or be/feel overwhelmed as it’s not going to help you in the long term. Every week leave gaps to hang out with friends, read a book, get some extra sleep play your favourite game or just doing something that you love. Wellbeing is a real thing and is affecting many negatively so take care of it as it takes care of you.

I pledge to take time for myself and to have at least 30mins of self care during the week and an hour on the weekends/holidays. Some things that I will do include walking my dog, reading a book, playing tennis and cooking. I choose to do these things as I enjoy them all and is a mix depending on how much energy I have and the weather as I can always read a book even when I feel tired, walk my dog which is easy to get motivation for as someone never forgets when it’s time, while playing tennis I can hang out with friends while doing something that I enjoy and get physical activity and cooking I personally find peaceful and eating it after is always enjoyable. It should be easy to stick to these things as they’re already incorporated into my everyday life as I enjoy doing all of them.

Product Validation

To me, the key to success in a business is gaining constructive feedback from your customers. Getting feedback allows you to improve your product and make it more appealing towards your target audience. To be able to do this we were given the opportunity to participate in a markets on the common where we then decided we would conduct our product validation.

My plan for the product validation was to make 20-30 cookies of the 3 different flavours and icing design (As stated in my previous post the custom icing didn’t work out) then give them out for free in return for them to complete a Microsoft forms that would give me the feedback based off what my customers opinion of the cookie that they’d tasted. This would then allow me to see which cookie flavour would be the most popular in future upcoming markets.

Altogether I would say that the market was quite successful as many customers enjoyed my cookies and gave good feedback. I also gained some feedback from friends who ordered some giving me some more money in future markets meaning that I wouldn’t have lost any from this one.

The results from my forms are shown below:

My first aim was to find out who my customer was so by finding out the age group and gender would help me identify who my target audience was.

My next step was to then find out what cookie flavour the customer had tested so that when I then observed the results after it would give an easier view on the different types of cookies and how they tasted.
By asking what cookie flavour the customer had in question 3 it allowed me to see the results clearly from the different flavours. In this product validation it also gave me the opportunity to see how much my customers would pay for the cookies so in the survey I put in how much they’d pay for 1 and how much they’d pay for 4 so I’d see the difference between how much they’d pay for a big and small batch.

The median price for the vanilla was $1.50, chocolate was $1.25 and lemon was $1.50. Getting these opinions then showed me how much to sell my cookies for, so I decided that I’d sell 1 for $1.50. In terms of the bigger batches of cookies the median prices for vanilla $4, for chocolate $4 and for lemon $5. In my opinion I wasn’t going to sell a big batch of cookies for that much as it would cost me 50cents to produce 1 cookie meaning that my unit price was $1. I’m still unsure about how much to sell the pack of 4 cookies for but am thinking about either $3 which would give me a $1 unit price or $3.50 which would give me a $1.50 unit price.

Some things that I would like to improve from my product validation market in terms of presentation and advertising would be to think about the presentation of my stall before the day of the market as when it came to the day the only things that I had was 1 poster and my cookies in a box meaning that it wasn’t as clear what flavour the different cookies were. I’d say that I also wasn’t the clearest in terms of what my customers were required to do and should’ve made a poster on what to do as many customers kept on continuously asking “How much do they cost” and their understanding of what was required wasn’t the clearest.

To me the most important thing is to see ways how you can improve your cookies. In the last question which was optional I asked them to give any ways that I could improve. The first was to include a new flavour which was choc chip and the second was to make it softer and chewier.

Despite receiving good feedback and having no cookies left by the end there would be many things that I would want to improve on in terms of presentation for future markets. I was happy that we’d done this product validation and am excited to present my improved cookies at later markets after I continue with more ideating.

Production of cookies

At first when starting this cookie business, I was thinking cookies will be easy enough to make, icing might consist of a bit of trial and error but would still be reasonably easy. Well lets just say looking back at that now, I was extremely wrong and that we ‘flearning’ is just part of life and that sometimes you need to celebrate your failures.

My plan for the production of the cookies was to make the icing the day before so that it would be a bit thicker when I iced it and when it came to the actual making the day after I would make 3 different types of the base cookies which consisted of cocoa, lemon and vanilla. I would then allow them to cool and ice different designs on to them which included reindeers, snowmen, marble and flowers.

Original ingredients for recipe

To be able to make these cookies with minimal cost and not having to mess around looking at lots of recipes I decided to find one that had simple and cheap ingredients that would be bland but once I customise and add the lemons/vanilla/cocoa would be full of flavour.

My altered ingredient list for each recipe

I was unsure about what cookie designs to put on the cookies so I decided that I would find some inspiration on pintrest then get feedback from different people. The feedback that I received was definitely constructive as people said that some of the Christmas ones looked a bit creepy and that the doughnuts had warts. Then based of this feedback I decided that I was going to make 4 different designs; marbling, snowman, flowers & reindeer.

When I’d started making the cookies everything was running smoothly as I’d prepared the icing the day before and left it to chill overnight, made the cookie dough in the morning and left it in the fridge for a few hours. Then all of a sudden lots started to go wrong. While the cookies were sitting in the oven some were kind of deflating and becoming larger and thinner while others were staying the same shape. I didn’t understand the reason behind it, as the dough came from the same batches and before putting them in the oven insured that they were all a similar thickness. After this I continued to persevere and thought that it will be fine I can just slightly alter some of the designs when I ice them.

So I allowed the cookies to then cool overnight then would ice them the next day, except that also didn’t go very well. The first design that I was going to ice on was the marbled ones, so I used a tutorial that I’d previously found in YouTube the day before that seemed easy enough. Next time when someone says Before doing something make sure that it’s within your limits and if it isn’t at least learn how to from an ‘expert’ as I seriously should’ve thought about that before starting.

The icing didn’t turn out very well as it was just making biggest mess ever therefore wasting most of the icing, didn’t look appealing and tasted way too sweet on top of the cookie. I then asked for an opinion from my Dad who recommended doing swirls on top as it wouldn’t make the icing too sweet on top and despite not looking the best would be better than previously.

Final product of the cookies

But sometimes you just have to view this in a different way as across life nothing’s ever going to be perfect and that we learn from our failures and that sometimes you have to celebrate them.

Ideation with Ikigai

For Innovation and Leadership one of the projects that we did was the Side-hustle. Our aim was to create a product/service for the community. One of our first steps in creating our product was the ideation of the product. The way how we did this was through creating an Ikigai.

The Ikigai consisted of 4 main categories

  1. What you are good at
  2. What you can be paid for
  3. What you love
  4. What the world needs

That then intersected into 4 components of the ikigai.

  1. Passion
  2. Mission
  3. Profession
  4. Vocation

Using the ikigai we then listed 3 things relating to the categories. After completing them we had this focus group throughout the class where we would look and discuss with a partner at our classmates ikigai about potential goods or services to sell at markets, this process would’ve continued for everyone in the class.

The recommendations that I received were all products which were:
A cookbook
Healthy snacks for athletes on the go
Sports therapy stress less sessions
Sport coaching
Dog walker
Bakery stand
 
Using the recommendations, I then brainstormed some ideas of what I personally have enjoyed. My decision for the product that I would make would be cookies with different flavoured bases that have custom designs iced onto the cookie that vary from different themes including Christmas and nature.
 
Using the ikigai had helped me come up with many unique products and services that I could’ve potentially done.

The Gene Gibson Case


In the early hours of February 26th, 2010, Josh Warneke, age 21 years was found dead, lying on the side of Old Broome Road. He was last seen walking home after a night out with friends in Broome and to this day no one knows what happened to him. In the decade after his murder, lots occurred including the wrongful imprisonment of Kiwirrkurra man Gene Gibson, the mother of Josh is still seeking for answers to this day. Within the time that Gene was being investigated there were many principles of justice that were abused, and it was only towards when he applied for an appeal where they were starting to properly be followed.

There are several of principles of justice that are designed to create equality and freedom for all in the court of law within Australia. This means that everyone is to be treated fairly no matter who they are when undergoing trial or being investigated.

An example of some principles of justice includes the Indigenous to be read out the Anunga guidelines when being investigated or arrested. These guidelines consist of many rights including the right to an interpreter if they can’t understand or speak English fluently, to be cautioned properly by a police officer, right to legal aid if they’re financially disadvantaged or otherwise also have the right to hire their own lawyer, a friend of the prisoner is permitted to be present but only if they will support them. Police intimidation of witnesses is also forbidden which is where police pressure a witness/suspect into pleading or making a false confession, right to appeal meaning that if the accused believes that their sentence unjust and wants to have their sentence either decreased or quashed altogether. These principles of justice are used to protect us all but are sometimes abused by the police as they’re extremely high in power and can disadvantage an individual throughout the course of an investigation which is what occurred in the Gene Gibson case.


One of the many principles that was violated in the Gene Gibson case is that everyone is equal by the law. This was abused as Gene was an Indigenous man meaning that the Anunga guidelines were supposed to be read out to him when being interviewed by police but no attempt was made for them to be read out. Some of the rights within the Anunga guidelines include a caution to the right of silence which he wasn’t informed about, wasn’t told about his right to legal aid until quite late in the case and the right to a trained interpreter which he wasn’t provided with in the interviews as he only had a fellow indigenous elder with him who was pressuring him into saying what the police wanted to hear. These examples have demonstrated that Gene wasn’t treated fairly or with equability before the law.

Gene Gibson(before to right & after to left from his wrongful conviction)

Another element of the Gene Gibson case that represented a miscarriage of justice was the police intimidation of witnesses. This means that police pressure a witness/suspect into pleading to a guilty verdict or providing false evidence that can help lead to the conviction of a suspect. To me this was one of the main factors that lead to his wrongful prosecution, if Gene understood better and decided to plead not guilty then the police would have presented the confession in which they pressured Gene to explain what happened so that it would place him, where Josh was found and similarly fit what the forensic pathologists found to be what occurred during the feud based on Josh’ injuries and what his cause of death was. Except the confession that Gene made, he was pressured to say by police and an Indigenous elder who were pressuring him into telling him what the police wanted to hear. As Gene’s first language wasn’t English and he was a ‘people pleaser’ this made it even easier for the police to get that false confession. This example has demonstrated that police intimidation of witnesses was a key element that led to Gene’s wrongful imprisonment.

Photo of the victim Josh Wareneke

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A cross in the location where Josh was found dead, on the side of Old Broome road


Ingrid Bishop the victim’s mother who vowed for Gene’s release after wrongful imprisonment

Gene gibson exiting Casuarina prison after he was released

An element of the Gene Gibson case that was supported was the right to an appeal. After serving nearly 5 years in prison, his legal team and the victim’s mother Ingrid Bishop applied and supported for Gene to get an appeal against his sentence meaning that his case could have the possibility to be overturned which the judge eventually granted for his case to be heard again. The right to an appeal means that the accused has the potential to have a reduced sentence or for it to just be quashed altogether. When Gene’s case was heard in the Western Australian Court of Appeal the judge quashed his conviction because of the many miscarriages of justice that occurred including police intimidation of witnesses and the right to equability as well as there being no concrete proof, only his forced confession.


In the end after his wrongful imprisonment, he was given $1.5million compensation. This shows what the miscarriages of justice can lead to as this forever affects the victim and will change their life forever as there will always be this scar within them from this tragic event. Josh’s killer hasn’t been caught to this day and his mother is still seeking closure in this case.

SoyNatural Candles ($20 Boss Term 3)

After semester 1 where we created our business Pen & paper we felt as if we had more to us so we went to something completely different and went to candles. Yes, that’s right we created a new business called SoyNatural Candles, but they weren’t any ordinary ones otherwise how would we be able to sell them ours were infused with natural plants and herbs that came out of our back garden and were made with soy wax meaning that it’s better for the environment. We chose to make candles because there was currently a big demand for them at the time and we also wanted to try new things.

Some challenges that our group faced during the process of this include finding decent priced soy wax as we didn’t want to harm the environment by using paraffin wax as well as finding a way to make them unique. We also had to do all of our production at someone’s house as we were required to melt the wax in a saucepan and keep the herbs and plants fresh when we put them in there. After our first market we found out something that had been happening to our candles. They were going mouldy because the plants had lots of air but this was easily solved by just covering the plants in the wax meaning that the plants wouldn’t have any air so that they’d mould.

During the production of our candles we would meet up every fortnight after school to produce our candles as we had 2 markets in that term and had to complete lots of pre-orders. Luckily we were able to produce them in bulks as we’d fill up the saucepan about halfway and 1 person would keep an eye on it while stirring while the other 2 would put the plants/herbs and wick inside of the jar meaning that we’d be able to produce them quite fast as we could allow the wax to dry overnight.

Some improvements and additions that we’d made to our candles include adding more plants and herbs as well as new sizes. We’d originally only had 1 size candle which was 150ml which would be infused with either flower petals or rosemary. After the first market we then added a new size which was 300ml and add new plants and herbs which were holy basil, lavender and some cute pink flowers. We’d constantly post on our social media page taking aesthetic pictures trying to get the word out of our business.

Altogether our business was quite successful and we were able to make $50 profit each.

$20 Boss Sem 1

For semester 1 I had decided to do $20 Boss where we were required to start our own business and sell our products in a market during week 9. This was similar to the Christmas market but also had its differences because we were able to relate it since we had to create our own product I’d joined a group where we were all very creative and would take leadership but little did we know that our ideas would clash. After brainstorming many different ideas we’d made our final decision to make customised notebooks. We’d decided to make customised notebooks because we can all agree that notebooks can sometimes be utterly boring and writing is a skill that has been lost over time. Writing can help many things including mental wellbeing as it can be used to write down your emotions and feelings or could simply just be to draw or write in some schoolwork. This is why we decided to get some potential design covers and choose what cover they personally wanted. We thought that with all our skills we’d be able to easily accomplish it but it was a lot more challenging than expected with a lot of steps. We’d started off by doing a design sprint challenge where we had to explore different ideas to solve a problem within the world.

A picture of my group at the market

The capability that was most useful for us was creativity and there were also many others to improve on include organisation like who was going to do what in terms of production as 2 of the group members did most of the production and also a thorough timeline and actually trying to achieve our goals. We also could have used effective communication as we didn’t make it clear if we were going to meet up or collect materials and who was going to do what in terms of production and advertising.

Measuring book covers

On the 16th of June, we were all ready for the market although we were only taking pre-orders we had a prototype for our customers to have a look at. The market went successful and managed to make a $20 profit.

In this project, I have grown by learning to work with some different people to what I usually do and I have also learnt that every idea won’t always work which is why we continue ideating to make our idea even better than it was. If I were to do this project again I’d focus a bit more on time management and figure out how long it would take us to make the notebooks. Even though it didn’t go as well as we were hoping to this was an amazing learning experience for all of us.

Wood sem 1 2021

This semester I was doing Wood and our task was to create a wooden spinning top handle that we personalised to make it our own.

At the first lesson we’d learnt about the need of ppe (personal protective equipment) and some of the safety that we were required to use while operating the machinery.

The main elements that I had to apply to my spinning top is that I had to ensure that it would be comfy to hold and that I would be capable of doing all of the changes that I had to do to within the time limit and what I was able to do in terms of shapes.

I applied this when I was designing my project by making a small hole on each side that you’d be able to put your hand inside of so that you wouldn’t have to hold the outside and use simple but effective shapes to make it look better.

My first step in creating my wooden spinning top was that I had to use the bench and pedestal drill to make the holes in our original wooden piece where the spinning bit will go. This gave us the size and shapes that we’d have to work within where we were then able to draw 5 different potential designs for our wooden spinning top. The one that I ended up choosing had the bottom part like a carrot as well as the bit at the top and had 2 holes on the sides for a hand.

 As my design that I drew out was similar to a carrot shape I was required to use the Disc and belt sander combo where I created the bottom shape of the carrot.  I then used the scroll saw to make the rest of my cuts and shapes. This included making the 2 holes on each side so that your hand will be more comfortable and the little bump at the end that is like the top bit of a carrot.  The last step was to sand the wooden spinning top which I didn’t quite complete.

Some challenges that I encountered during this project were time as we had less time compared to others as we a few public holidays which means that we’d have to be more efficient in class to be able to complete it and also sanding the inside corners in the holes where your hand goes was quite difficult to get inside as it was slightly uneven. I overcame this by making it a bit more even while I was sanding so that it would be more flat as it was only very slight which allowed me to sand the inside corners.

Some skills that I have learnt from this project include how to use the all the different machines and that you’d have to think about how would you like something to be.

I would recommend this project to a friend as you can use your creativity to produce something that is unique and that you can customise how you like it.

Some of the college capabilities that I used included creativity since we had to use our imagination to customise our spinning top within the limits.

Utopia Reflection

Project Utopia has taught me many new and exciting concepts about how I can incorporate my learning in different subjects that include English, HASS, InnovatED and Science. The purpose of Project Utopia was to design our own community which also included lots of many other steps.

Reading The Giver was the beginning of the journey where I would learn about the concepts of a ‘perfect world’. Some of the ideas of a Utopia in The Giver included no cars and walking or having a bicycle, everyone doing a certain amount of service time to help out with different jobs which the Elders (Committee) choose depending on who suits the job the best. In my community one of the ideas that I included was not using cars and walking or cycling.

In Sustainability I learnt about how to reduce water and energy usage through behaviours and features by designing and building a sustainable house. Some of the water saving behaviours included two-minute showers, watering the garden in the early morning or evening and turning off the tap while you are brushing your teeth. Some of the water saving features of a sustainable house were a rainwater tank and low flush toilet. The energy saving behaviours included turning off lights when not needed or if the room’s not in use and only turning on the dishwasher when it is full. The energy saving features are insulating water pipes, solar panels, insulated walls and roof and LED lights. These initiatives will help the world in different ways like making sure that countries do not have a shortage of water, reducing use of fossil fuels and production of greenhouse gases.

Sustainable house

In my Utopia I included these sustainability features by putting solar panels on top of all buildings and having rainwater tanks around the community.

Sustainability also led to consideration of the environmental quality of my Utopia. This included where various services were located leading me to think of liveability factors such as building a community as it would influence the friendships and quality of life within my Utopia. The subjective factors would attract people into the community depending on their likes and dislikes. These liveability factors would help me to decide what buildings I would want to include in my Utopia.

In preparation for making my community I designed an overall plan. To me, the main thing that I had focused on was environmental quality as it affects the climate and the way that people live. I made provision for renewable energy and lots of green space for residents to enjoy.

A big part of my Utopia was the UN Global Goals. These are Sustainable Development Goals many countries wish to achieve by 2030. Most of them are focused on the environment and basic everyday needs. After prioritising the seventeen Global Goals, I could seek accreditations in some of the areas that were of most importance to members of my group. The accreditations gained were No Poverty and Affordable and Clean Energy.

Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere – United Nations  Sustainable Development
No Poverty Accreditation
Energy – United Nations Sustainable Development
Affordable and Clean Energy Accreditation

I achieved the goal No Poverty by providing financial support such as having affordable babysitting and childcare centres to help support families and having a homeless shelter for people who don’t have access to everyday needs such as food, water and shelter. The other accreditation was Affordable and Clean Energy which was achieved by having solar and wind energy within the community.

While doing Utopia I had to use nearly all the College Capabilities such as problem solving by figuring out how I could provide solutions for the Global Goals like No Poverty and Affordable and Clean energy, collaborate by working together effectively in a group and effective communication by sharing ideas and helping each other. There were also lots of other capabilities that I used like creativity when considering how to make my community unique and being organised which helped to decide what would be the focus and priorities each week. The College Capabilities have helped me to work stronger and more productively as part of a team.

EFFECTIVE 
COMMUNICATION 
LEADERSHIP 
ETHICAL 
COLLABORATIVE 
PROBLEM 
SOLVING 
MAKING A 
POSITIVE 
DIFFERENCE 
OVERFUL 
SELF-AWARE 
ORGANISED 
RESILIENT 
INQUISITIVE 
CREATIVE 
IN OURSELVES
College Capabilities

Project Utopia has been a challenging and amazing learning experience which has improved and taught me many new skills, as well as helping me to gain experience of the issues involved in planning modern communities.

Final Product of my Utopia