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14 — Howick and Pakuranga Times, Thursday, December 10, 2015
Budding engineers rewarded By Farida Master
L
ooking at the technically brilliant engineering projects submitted by students of Mission Heights Junior and Sancta Maria Colleges, it’s safe to say that the future of our country is in safe hands. Erica Ter-Huurne and Tracy Danbrook from Sancta Maria College designed and constructed a plant propagation system for their client who wanted something that was easily portable and used environmentally friendly, weather resistant materials. They researched similar items on the market, and considered the school’s social and physical environment to ensure they developed a suitable system. It won them a cheque of $2000 as the prime award for the senior section of the 2015 Transpower Neighbourhood Engineers Awards. Every year Transpower gives prizes to the most innovative collaboration between students, teachers and volunteer engineers. The awards offer the students the opportunity to work with engineers on practical projects in
an impressive record of the school and community success, having won prizes as well as provide a creative way to enhance the over the last three years, had three go-getting teams technology curriculum. work with engineering Former Sancta Maria mentors to develop techstudent and Airways New nological solutions to an Zealand engineer, Zac area of concern that stuMackintosh, mentored the dents identified in their students and says: “It’s school or community. been great being able to Christina Bang, Sarah give back to my old school, Hamza and Tyla Amos and seeing how far the worked on a project titled technology programme ‘Feel the Heat’ which was has developed since I was developed to alert parents a student. I found the freeif they accidentally left dom that the students were their children in the car. given to imagine a project PROPAGATION UNIT: Erica Ter-Huurne, left, and “A lot of children and and see it through to com- Tracy Danbrook won the Transpower Neighbourhood Engineers senior section prime award. Photos supplied pets are being left behind pletion, refreshing.” in the car and this device Matt Henderson, teacher for TiC Design and Visual com- for a school grounds portable alerts the parents as bright red munication and Multi-Materials shelter. Evans D’cruze, Miguel letters pop up to remind them of Technology, says the process Juan, Corey Williams and Hau- the potential danger,” says Year 9 gave the students an opportunity sia Vaiangina won $1000 for student Christina. ‘Lock-down’ another project to see what it is like to experience the shelter made from recycled actual engineering situations materials. It holds four people initiated by Katrina Mohamwith storage space for students’ med, Bella Lin and Ryan Ngo with ‘real world’ stakeholders. “It has been a real privilege to bags and a solar powered charg- was developed to provide an alert to computer screens if stuguide them through the process ing station. Three teams from Mission dents needed to be alerted of an and watch them succeed in taking a stakeholder brief through to Heights Junior College also intruder or any other natural gained merit awards in the senior threat. construction,” he says. “Apart from a fire alarm this Another Sancta Maria team section. The school that is developing technological solution can send won the senior merit award
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a signal from one device to every computer screen in the school,” says Katrina. The two groups gained valuable programming support from MHJC’s IT manager Ben Doughney, former principal Joan Middlemiss and principal Ian Morrison. They also worked closely with Transpower engineer, Mikesh Patel. Ngapipi Herewini, Ashley Taimataora, Molly Herbert and Sophie Chen’s project ‘Walking Danger’ involved the development of an electronic device to increase safety at pedestrian crossings. The girls used a Raspberry Pi and Python programming language to develop their prototype and were supported by Fisher and Paykel appliances electronics engineer, Brett Willis and MHJC mentor teacher, Rebecca McGrath. Working with infra red and motion detectors, the group documented each process and researched a 100 plus-year timeline of pedestrian crossings and signals comparing the past with the present.
DID YOU KNOW? “Snoopy’s Christmas” is a 1967 novelty song about the imaginary antics of Charlie Brown’s pet beagle in the comic strip “Peanuts”. It was performed by ‘The Royal Guardsmen’ who were a six-piece from Florida. Their first single was “Baby Let’s Wait,” which flopped. Their next single was “Snoopy vs The Red Baron,” which was a huge hit, leading to three sequels: “The Return of the Red Baron,” “Snoopy’s Christmas” and “Snoopy for President.” The band made a comeback in 2006 and released “Snoopy vs Osama”. “Snoopy’s Christmas” is about how Snoopy had to go out and fight the Red Baron on Christmas Eve. Although fictitious, the song is set against the backdrop of a legitimate historical event. During World War I, in 1914, “The Christmas Truce” was initiated not by German and British commanders, but by the soldiers themselves. Trench-bound combatants exchanged small gifts across the lines, with Germans giving beer to the British, who sent tobacco and tinned meat back in return. “Snoopy’s Christmas” reached the number one position in New Zealand in 1967, and remains a popular Christmas song. The song was the fastest-selling single at the time it was originally released and is estimated to be the biggest selling overseas single sold in New Zealand in the 20th century. The song frequently re-enters the New Zealand singles chart. “Snoopy’s Christmas” was also voted “the worst Christmas song of all time” by readers of The New Zealand Herald in 2007.
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