Month: November 2023

Emerging Engineers Competition 2023

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My team at UWA

(From left to right in photo) With Grace Shackleton, Dominique To, Nicola Fallon, myself, and Felicity Simon, I collaborated to innovate a solution for a low carbon footprint design to power a house in 2040 – the theme for the 2023 UWA Emerging Engineers Competition. The event focused on empowering girls and women in STEM fields and encouraging students to think beyond conventional solutions to solve real world problems. I’ve been interested in creative ways to mitigate the effects of climate change (I’ve made it the focal point for many of my research and school activities) so I was excited to hear about the theme for this years competition. We ended up as the winning team – passing the shortlisted solutions and coming first out of the finalist schools.

Our Solution – Aqua Panels

A slide from our presentation showing our 3D printed prototype and 3D digital model of our solution

Combining solar panels and aquaponics’ microbial fuel cells (MFCs), we created the fusion energy generator ‘Aqua Panels’.

‘A Microbial Fuel Cell is a sustainable, renewable, and low-carbon solution to generating electricity. Combined with solar panels on top of the device, our design allows for a ‘double generator’ setup that both produces more energy than either technology would alone, or saves space.’

A snippet of Dominique’s Speech

For a more elaborate explanation of our solution, please see our initial presentation and our Canva final presentation:

Aqua-Pannels.pptx

https://www.canva.com/design/DAFtvyP_HRI/VNDNsH_iyJ4kGXLv0uBrGQ/view?utm_content=DAFtvyP_HRI&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink

My Contribution and What I Learnt

Preparing for the competition, I facilitated communication with my team members by checking in and updating the team online. I broke down the project into smaller steps, prioritised them, and discussed them with the team to distribute the workload. I brainstormed and researched ideas for the solution and came up with utilising aquaponics. I worked on the presentation and wrote and practised my part of the speech. I think our efforts paid off and I’m very happy with how we worked.

I learnt lots of different ideas, mindsets, and approaches from the people I worked with when solving the problem, and how effective teamwork can be. I greatly enjoyed the experience of working as an engineer – even if it was on a smaller scale – I aim to use the valuable knowledge for the future.

Science Year 9 Project | Spaghetti Towers

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After exploring the topic of seismic activity for our Year 9 Science class, we worked on a hands-on project where we researched, planned, and constructed earthquake-proof architecture through the classroom form of building spaghetti and BluTack towers. Our task was to build a structurally sound spaghetti tower that could withstand the forces of a simulated earthquake whilst fulfilling specific limitations of the task (e.g. measurement limitations). The hands-on innovation required in this project gave us a glimpse into an engineer’s task and thought process when designing architecture, especially earthquake-proof buildings in real life (e.g. Japan’s earthquake resistant high-rise buildings).

Constructing The Spaghetti Tower
Finalising the Spaghetti Tower

Link to the testing phase of our spaghetti tower (simulating earthquake seismic waves through shaking): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UAhyaOY3vUtwhAk_C_YyNYIloZe7tPT0/view?usp=sharing

    Engineering Process

    Throughout the project, we followed the engineering process:

    Some improvements we could implement include extra repetitions of the testing phase or adding a ‘practise trial’ phase, an expanded ‘share and improve’ phase, and making the ‘define’ phase more thorough. Firstly, the extra repetitions of a testing phase would help our tower’s performance issue – our construction plan was effective but our execution of the building phase wasn’t ideal (we think our tower fell apart as we rushed construction and didn’t firmly stick the spaghetti into the BluTack). Extra practice of building our tower would help us prepare for testing phases. Secondly, whilst we did have a ‘share and improve’ phase where our group discussed what we could do better, an expanded approach to this would’ve helped our outcomes. This could look like communicating not only with members of our group but with other groups and people in our class in order to share ideas. Finally, making the ‘define’ phase more thorough could improve our understanding of the engineering process in real life. For example, empathising with the stakeholders who are affected by the issue (earthquakes) could help develop our understanding of how this task applies to the real world.

    Teamwork and Collaboration

    At the start of the project, we allocated roles for each group member in order to use our individual strengths the best we could to contribute to the engineering challenge. I was the Project Manager (keeps the team on track) and Reporter (ensures we are ready before deadline), Anna Gray was the Equipment Manager (makes sure materials are available), and Angelina Armstrong was the Speaker (seeks external help and communicates with others). My roles utilised my leadership skills and planning, Anna’s role relied on her reliability and organisation, and Angelina’s role relied on her clarity in her communication skills.