CULTIVATING A LOVE FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

How would you envision Singapore to be in 50 years time? Having multi-level highways? Or perhaps becoming a floating city?

This is what the team of four from St Hilda s Primary School Amazing Four imagined Singapore to be in their entry for the Singapore Amazing Machine Competition (SAMC) 2016.

The task they had chosen for their machine was to showcase how science and technology could be used to tackle problems for Singapore in the future. The girls saw land scarcity and a lack of potable water as problems Singaporeans would face in the future and used a series of systems like pulley and windmills to counter them.

Team member Camillia Mohamed Ashraff explained: We wanted to make Singapore a better place to live in and this is how we saw the future of Singapore to be like.

The Primary Four girls spent a month conceptualising and building their machine out of everyday objects such as ice-cream sticks, plastic cups and marbles. For their creativity, they came out tops in Category A of the competition.

Organised by DSO National Laboratories as part of the DSO Amazing series of competitions, SAMC 2016 saw more than 200 students and 58 teams from across primary, secondary and pre-tertiary institutions conceptualising and building Rube Goldberg machines. These machines refer to devices that are deliberately over-engineered or overdone to perform a very simple task in a very complicated fashion, usually including a chain reaction.

At the awards ceremony held at the Singapore Science Centre on 20 Jul, Guest of Honour Acting Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills) and Senior Minister of State for Defence Ong Ye Kung presented the winners with their accolades.

Speaking at the event, Mr Ong highlighted the importance of science and technology in today s context: We live in an era of big challenges climate change, terrorism and security, and ageing. As a new generation, we have to solve these problems. If we use (science and technology) well, we can solve tomorrow s problems.

He also urged the students to take up science and technology as a calling, remain inquisitive and sharpen soft skills like teamwork.

More than ever, because of technological advancements, science will continue to improve our lives So go forth, be an engineer, pursue science and technology and make life better for all of us, he said.

This rang true for Category C champions ACTeam Aaron. The team of four 17-year-olds from Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) intends to pursue science and technology after they graduate from their integrated programme.

For their category, they were required to use as many steps as possible to accomplish the simple task of moving a 10cm x 10cm cardboard off a flat surface without physical contact with the cardboard.

Team leader Aaron Koh said that they used many steps in the process such as sensors, a catapult, a Ferris wheel, dominos and magnetism to create the chain effect. The team also made use of physics and chemical reactions which produced gas and heat to trigger different steps.

He added that during their three weeks of conceptualisation, they also found many new and interesting ideas to incorporate into their machine, including a force sensor which they found when they were shopping for materials.

Aaron explained: The force sensor is a sensor that detects an impact and we attached it to the target board. We then got the judge (from the judging panel) to shoot a dart (from a gun) at the target board and the impact will trigger the force sensor for our machine to start.

Despite the tight timeline and numerous initial frustrations, the team credited a strong friendship and tight teamwork for their win and looks forward to cultivating a love for science and technology in the younger generation.

Team member Bernard Chan said: What we have to do is to expose science and technology to the younger generation, let them tinker their way, explore and find out.

He added that this was an important way of cultivating an interest in those areas so that the younger generation can also step up and contribute to the future of Singapore .