Science focus for school

LAST week, students from Creek Street Christian College took part in ANSTO’s National Science Week hackathon.

Over three days the hackathon involved small teams brainstorming and discussing ideas to deal with a problem with the help of an industry mentor and was in line with the National Science Week theme.

This year’s topic was Food: Different by Design with four challenges to choose from, including technology in agriculture, healthy diets, Indigenous foods, and food waste.

Year 10 student Braidy Phillips was part of the five-member who chose the technology in agriculture problem.

“We were discussing how to make food more sustainable and make harvesting and transporting food more efficient without burning fossil fuels,” Braidy said.

Year 9 student Jada Davies said it was a fun program to be involved with as it required students to think differently about a real-world problem.

“We hadn’t really done anything like this until we did the hackathon, we were really on our own we had to think of it ourselves so having he freedom to your own problems and own solutions really helped me see how we can use our knowledge of science to fix things in our world,” she said.

Head of science at the college Lynne Hall said the event aimed to help students be more aware of what’s happening around them while promoting many transferrable skills for any workplace.

“It brings all those skills like problem solving and teamwork that you can use in any area, time management was another thing because it was such a short time frame,” she said.