Fantastic Future Earth Scientists Succeed

This week three teams of Year 7 Science enthusiasts ventured into the Queensland Academy for Health Sciences, Southport, to compete in the Griffith University Gold Coast Science Trivia Challenge against 56 schools from all over the Gold Coast. The teams of four answered 48 questions in relation to STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

The night was made up of six rounds of questions, each in relation to a different branch of Science. Round one was ‘Future Earth’ and consisted of questions about our outer-space endeavours, resources and conservation. The second round was about technology. These questions regarded the internet and technological innovations. After the first two rounds, Somerset’s ‘Aurum Aquilea’, (Ruben Yam, Jackson McMonagle, Cindi Xue, and Lilah Thurbon) was in the lead, with 16 out of 16 points.

The other rounds; Sciences, Mathematics, Engineering and a wildcard round, all came and went, with the 56 teams battling it out for first place. At the end of the night, before the winning team was announced, a tie breaker was called; between Varsity and Southport State School. After Southport won the tiebreaker, the final scores were announced. As the judges projected the scores from lowest to highest on the wall, everyone’s eyes dropped to the final row, containing the winning score. To everyone’s surprise, the tie breaker had been for second place, and Somerset’s Aurum Aquliea placed first.

The other Somerset teams performed exceptionally well, with ‘The Jakes’ (Jason Li, Kade Reynoldson, Anna Georgeson and Emelia Fink) Placing 11th and the ‘Science Spartans’ (Kate Jordan, Hugh Munro, Raffi Anderson and Lauren Chan) placing 17th.

A huge congratulations to all the teams for their enthusiasm, as well as their ability to collaborate so well throughout the challenge. This was a truly enlightening for everyone involved and we were all grateful for the opportunity given to us by the Science Department to participate. We would also like to thank Mr Walker for driving us to the event.