For 2 full on days Gosford Rotary has combined with the University of Newcastle and nearly every other rotary club on the Central Coast to stage the Science and Engineering Challenge 2018. More than 400 of the best year 9 and 10 students on the coast pitted their problem solving and innovative skills to construct solutions to engineering problems. And they had lots of fun at the same time !
Problems ranging from connecting electricity grids to constructing bionic hands and from encoding fibre optic signals to building a Mars buggy chassis were no problem for our scientists and engineers of tomorrow.
In a bid to encourage more enrolment in STEM subjects the University of Newcastle has combined with 11 of the 14 rotary clubs on the Central Coast to design and present an incredible variety of challenges, sometimes using really simple components, and the results are there for all to see.
From a very small beginning right here in Gosford 18 years ago this is now a national event travelling to every state and territory. More than 550,000 students have "done the challenge" and every year another 22000 add to that number.
Gosford Rotary is very proud to have started such an event and we are very grateful to the other rotary clubs on the coast without whose support we simply could not manage. We are also priveliged to be given free use of the mighty St Edwards College Hall with undertakings to continue to the foreseeable future.
More than 40% of enrolled university physics students in Newcastle report being motivated by "the challenge".
Please see the event photos on our photo album.
