Kaipaki School’s year 8 EPro8 team (from left) Matthew Jones, Alicia Henwood and Nina Balsom. Absent: Caelan Tatkovich.
Ask Matthew Jones, Alicia Henwood, Nina Balsom and Caelan Tatkovich to whip up a motorised car and they’ll get busy with wires and connectors faster than you can say “engineering whizz kids”.
The Kaipaki School students have just proved their place among some of the best young scientific minds in the region by coming third in the Waikato/Bay of Plenty grand final of the year 7-8 EPro8 competition.
EPro8 is a nationwide inter-school science and engineering competition that encourages learners to ‘engineer, problem solve and innovate’.
Students compete in groups of four against 11 other teams, working at stations loaded with engineering equipment to complete challenges such as building a bridge or creating a rubber-band-powered caveman vehicle.
Matthew, Alicia, Nina and Caelan won the right to represent their school before moving on to a Hamilton challenge, where they came third, and the Waikato regional semi-finals, where they came second.
They went into the Waikato/Bay of Plenty grand final at Mokoia Intermediate School in Rotorua with varying levels of optimism.
“Matthew Jones was very certain we were going to win and I was kind of in the middle,” Alicia said.
The team focused on keeping cool heads and got so absorbed in their work over the 2.5-hour challenge none of them stopped to eat.
With the lead constantly seesawing between the teams, the atmosphere was tense.
“My dad was watching and he said it was actually more stressful being a spectator than it was being in it,” Nina said.
Luckily, the four year 8 students struck a task they were familiar with – building a conveyor belt.
Guessing this might come up, EPro8 teacher Julian Coutts had tracked down an unusually sized tyre tube from Torpedo 7 to cut up for the belt and practise with before the grand final.
The students were also grateful to Caelan’s family, who donated an electronics kit worth more than $900 to the school to help them sharpen their skills.
The overall challenge on the day involved constructing a machine to pick fruit, sending the fruit along a conveyor belt to be “washed” by light, collecting it in a bucket and building a vehicle to take it away.
The Kaipaki team finished third out of 12 Waikato and Bay of Plenty finalists.
“They were pretty proud of their result but also very humble,” Julian said.
“We are a small rural school and we came up against some big schools, so we did very well.”
Alicia said the experience had helped her learn some great teamwork skills, like “not being so bossy, working fast and learning to listen to other people’s ideas”.
Matthew, who wants to be an engineer one day, said he learnt the Trumpet ice creams at the Rotorua fuel station were “quite nice”.
Nina said the experience had given her an opportunity to work with people she wouldn’t normally work with.
“We learnt a lot about each other and how to work with all our differences,” she said.
“I had a lot of fun. We had a great group and we all supported each other.”
