STEM Cup – The Ultimate Challenge

Seven weeks. Seven challenges. Two bonus points challenges. One awesome STEM Cup.

STEM Cup is an initiative ran by Griffith University. Over seven weekly challenges, teams from all over the Gold Coast and Brisbane battled it out to see who would make it to the top ten teams going to the grand final for their division.

South Gold Coast alone saw a total of 47 teams from the primary and secondary school division competing, with three of these teams being from PBC.

Over the seven competition weeks, we competed in challenges such as code breaking, game development using only PowerPoint, designing oil tankers with a limited budget, a trivia competition and much more in the science, technology, engineering and maths fields, every Tuesday afternoon.

Then there was the nerve-wracking wait until the scores were updated every Friday.

Our team the PhysKids (Jett Mance, Cameron Thompson, and myself, Layla Ahern) managed to secure second place overall, granting us entry to the grand finals at Griffith University.

The grand finals were crazy. Unfortunately, we didn’t place in the top three going to the super finals, but it was an awesome day. The first challenge was essentially a giant board game, where we had to work together to answer trivia questions to get to the end. The only catch? The person walking on the squares that made up the board- the game piece- wasn’t allowed to speak for the entire hour. They could only mime their thoughts! This was a real challenge, especially since I was the game piece!

The second and final challenge was an engineering challenge –our design brief was to create a roller coaster for a marble with four turns and a functioning loop for bonus points. The roller coaster was required to go for 10-15 seconds. Unfortunately, none of the ten teams met the time, but there were some really innovative designs.

Both of these challenges, and this entire experience, has been a blast. I would highly recommend STEM cup as a challenging and rewarding experience for all.

Layla Ahern, Year 8