PUTTING THEIR SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE TO THE TEST

A pulley system comprising an elastic band, a thin cane, a green straw and a rubber ball, a gear system involving four wheels, over 20 dominoes, a heavy metal ball, a wooden knock massager and a rubber stand. These common household items were all part of an elaborate design to do a simple task: take a photo.

Designed by Team WRRT, a group of Primary 5 students from Yangzheng Primary School, this project is one of many that were submitted to this year's Singapore Amazing Machine Competition. The competition challenged teams to construct a device that would take a photo or film a video in as many steps as possible, with each step involving a certain scientific concept.

"We had to do a lot of research in the library and online, but we learnt a lot of new scientific concepts, like gravity, which we had not learnt in class," said 11-year-old Tiang Tze Ling, a member of Team WRRT.

She added: "We had a lot of people who helped us in our project. Besides our teachers, our classmates gave us encouragement and other new suggestions when our older design failed to work."

For their outstanding effort, the team received first prize in Category A (for Primary 4-6 students) from Senior Minister of State for Defence Chan Chun Sing during an award ceremony held at Science Centre Singapore on 30 Aug.

Addressing the award recipients, Mr Chan emphasised the need for Singapore to maintain a core group of scientists with deep expertise in their respective fields: "There cannot be a strong Singapore with a strong economy or defence system without a strong hall of scientists and technologists among us."

He also challenged the young scientists to overcome the impending constraints that Singapore will face in the future, such as making transport infrastructure more space-efficient, making high-rise flats feasible, and improving medical equipment.

16-year-old Loo Zong Hua, leader of Team Mean Machine, was happy and honoured that they were able to clinch top honours in Category C (for Secondary 4 to JC1 students) as well as the Creative Machine Award. For contestants in the upper-age category, their innovations must be able to start and stop recording a video of at least 30 seconds.

"It was a good opportunity to experiment new things. The project, which required us to make the design as complex as possible, challenged us to piece small pieces together and make the entire system work," said the River Valley High School student.

The project took the team six months to complete, and the design utilises water pressure from a hydraulic pump, a domino system as well as electrical energy from batteries, to record a video on a laptop.

Two hundred students from 20 schools were shortlisted for the award in this year's competition, the fourth in its edition. It is jointly organised by the DSO National Laboratories, Science Centre Singapore, School of Science & Technology and NUS High School of Mathematics and Science.