From building bridges to creating wind turbines: STEM takes over year 10

More than 200 year 10 students from seven secondary schools took part in the third Albury-Wodonga Science and Engineering Challenge presented by University of Newcastle at Albury Entertainment Centre, on Tuesday, April 30.

The Scots School Albury students Lara Brown and Lilly Hutchins, both 15, agreed it was positive to see so many girls interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) at the challenge.

"It is a really, really good thing, we've come up a lot," Lilly said.

Both of the girls share a passion for biology at school.

They said the day was a great way to explore new ideas for what they might want to do after school.

"We can really explore these different experiments and see if it's something we'd like to pursue in the future," Lilly said.

"That's something that is really good, I think."

"It kind of gives people ideas for what they would want to do for work experience because some of us are stuck on that," Lara added.

"It kind of opens up more opportunities."

Lara said the day had taught her to be more creative when it came to problem-solving.

Murray High School students Oscar Hartwig, and Quoc Vu, both 15, were eager to see the plane they created fly, even after some initial difficulties.

"When I split the plane in half, I thought 'oh yeah, we're not going to win anymore'," Oscar said.

"So we taped it back up and added some weight to the front."

The task was to create an aircraft and use a launch pad to see how far it would soar.

Both the boys were hoping they would win the challenge.

"I think it's the furthest we have seen today," Oscar said.

"Yeah, that's the furthest launch we had," Quoc added.

The students enjoyed having a day that was "hands-on".

"I hate just writing stuff down in my book, because that's really boring," Quoc said.

"But when you actually get to do it, it's like you get to make your own thing, you get to use your own ideas instead of just writing on a piece of paper."

Teams from Albury High School, Border Christian College, Murray High School, St Paul's College, Trinity Anglican College, The Scots School Albury and Xavier High School, accumulated points across the day through different tasks, based on their performance.

Border Christian College won with the highest point score at the end of the day and will go on to compete at the state final in Newcastle. Albury High School placed second.

The Rotary Club of Albury-Wodonga Sunrise organised the Border's event.

The University of Newcastle's Science and Engineering Challenge team leader Peter Newman, said the national competition sees about 25,000 students across the country get involved.

He said it is often a "50-50 split" between girls and boys at the competition.

"It's very exciting that we've got such an even distribution and we're seeing more and more women going into STEM careers," he said.

"We're not claiming we are the sole source of that but we're certainly playing our part."

Mr Newman hopes the students walk away from the day feeling inspired by science and engineering.

"It really is an experience for them to come and have a day where they're outside the classroom doing something different," he said.

The primary school Science and Engineering Challenge will take place on Wednesday, May 1.