Photo Credit: DSO National Laboratories (DSO) Minister Mr Lui Tuck Yew speaking with Cat A Championship winners from Kheng Cheng School at demonstration.
This year, more than 200 students from 23 primary, secondary and pre-tertiary institutions took part in Singapore Amazing Machine Competition. The students developed and built 53 Rube Goldberg machines where simple task was performed in a complicated fashion which involved as many steps as possible.
As this year, is Singapore’s Golden Jubilee, SG50, to mark and celebrate this special occasion, the competition required students to incorporate their vision for Singapore’s next 50 years in their respective machines to tell stories of Singapore’s past, present and future.
Students taking part in the competition spend months to develop their ideas, test the conceptual machines and going back to the drawing board. The 53 teams taking part in the competition were given one day to bring their ideas to life by setting up their machines at Science Centre Singapore (SCS) on 28 August 2015. The judging process will be based on several criteria which included creativity, number of distinct scientific concepts involved, successful completion of the task and the quality of their presentations to the judges. Bonus points were awarded to teams for submitting videos of their learning journey which highlight the learning process behind developing their machines from the start to the final submission.
The Guest-of-Honour Mr Lui Tuck Yew, Minister for Transport and Second Minister for Defence, presented the awards to the competition winners at the Awards Presentation Ceremony.
Photo Credit: DSO National Laboratories (DSO) Minister Mr Lui Tuck Yew observes demonstration of Cat C Championship winners’ machine
The Category C Winner from Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) came up with a creation that told the story of how Singapore was transformed from Third World to First World Country within a short period of 50 years.
Its creation followed a series of scientific concepts and models such as Newton’s Cradle, falling dominoes and electric circuits to complete the formation of the characters forming “HAPPY” and “SG50” a letter at a time. The judges were impressed with the overall complexity demonstrated in their invention!
Additional Information:
Singapore Amazing Machine Competition is part of the DSO National Laboratories (DSO) Amazing Series of Competitions, an outreach programme aimed at promoting interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) amongst young Singaporeans across the primary to tertiary levels.
The programme’s ultimate goal is to raise the brand awareness of DSO as a national defence R&D organisation, and interest young Singaporeans in a career in defence science and technology.
Please click HERE for more information.
Please click HERE to view videos of Rube Goldberg machines in action.
