St Brigid’s students came second in the Tournament of Minds in Canberra. In the back row are teacher Amelia Trompf, Thomas Harsant, Thomas O’Keefe, Ryley Howard and Talia Davidson. In the front row are Alex James, Indra Gowan, Calvin Amos and teacher David Williamson.By Melissa Meehan
ST Brigid’s Primary School students from grades 4,5 and 6, were given the opportunity earlier this month to represent their school and State at the Australasian Pacific Finals of the Tournament of Minds in Canberra.
After being locked in a room for three hours the group came second in the Maths/Engineering Primary category.
Tournament of Minds challenges groups of students to solve a problem and then write a play to present a story involving their invention.
Students in the Maths/Engineering category were given the task of inventing a device that would open three different sized Vegemite jars, without using thumbs or touching the lid.
Each group was given a box of materials, which included masking tape, ice cream sticks and cardboard.
“The materials were very limited but we were able to make a device from the cardboard inside of the masking tape and the ice cream sticks,” said Indra.
When asked to describe their invention students decided that the device looked similar to a spanner and shared the same characteristics.
Students were accompanied to Canberra by teachers Amelia Trompf and David Williamson as well as Principal Brett Collision.
“It was surprising how different each group’s designs were, none of them were the same,” said Ms Trompf.
Students described their excursion to the nation’s capital as exciting.
“We arrived in Canberra on the Thursday and the competition wasn’t until Saturday, so we were able to have a look around,” Thomas said.
During their four-day excursion students went on excursions to the National Museum, Questacom (Scienceworks), the War Memorial and Parliament House.
