| Daniel Lim |
THE National Finals for the Institution of Engineer-ing and Technology’s (IET) Faraday Do-It-Yourself ‘Mission to Mars’ Challenge was recently held at the Times Square Shopping Centre in Berakas.
Organised by IET in collaboration with the Oil and Gas Discovery Centre (OGDC), the finals saw six teams – which qualified from a preliminary round of 12 teams – comprising 36 students from six different schools competing against each other.
The competition was won by students from Paduka Seri Begawan Sultan Science College (Maktab Sains), who received a B$1,000 prize, a desktop computer, and certificates.
Finishing in second place was Seri Mulia Sarjana School, while third place went to Chung Hua Middle School (CHMS) Kuala Belait, each receiving $500 and $300.
In the finals, students research, design and produce prototype solutions to genuinely tough engineering problems they encountered in the previous challenges, which falls in line with IET Brunei’s vision of promoting the general advancement of science, engineering and technology and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on these subjects among the public, especially students.
The challenge also developed the students’ problem solving, team working and communication skills, as well as providing an opportunity for the students to put into practice the theories of the subjects they love.
The prizes were presented by IET Brunei Darussalam Chairperson for the 2014-2017 session, Simon Leong Kian Ann, and OGDC’s Science Communicator, Albert Chang Yew En.
The students were given a number of challenges and tasks in the finals: designing and building of a suitable mechanical claw to lift/extract “minerals” from a mock Mars surface area; designing and building a non-motorised transport system with lightings to transport the “mineral” samples back to the rocket; designing and building a rocket with sufficient payload to bring the samples back to Earth; and a demonstration of the prototypes.
The exercise was designed to give the students an insight into the roles and responsibilities of an engineering team, giving them the chance to demonstrate their technical abilities not only by creating their own prototypes, but also to justify their ideas, costs and implementation plans to the judges.
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