Hunterville students take on innovation race finals

FINAL COUNTDOWN: Hunterville School all girls team in the finals of the Epro8 Challenge today in Palmerston North. From left, Morna Collie, Tineisha McDougall, Zoe Nydegger-Monks and Emma Vennell. PHOTO/SUPPLIED

Today is the big day for a group of Year 7 and 8 girls from Hunterville School.

The students are competing in the finals of the Epro8 Challenge in Palmerston North.

EPro8 means "engineer, problem solve, and innovate".

The Hunterville School all-girls team took out first and second place in the EPro8 semi-finals in Feilding last month.

In the competition, teams of four students are given a series of challenges to complete over a two-and-a-half hour period. A typical challenge was building a 1.8m tower and hanging a swing to hold a 2kg weight. The weight would have to swing nine to 10 times in 11 seconds, to create an electronically controlled waving arm. Another was building a motorised moon buggy.

Each group has a designated workspace and a wide array of apparatuses to use including aluminium bars, screws, pulleys, electronic lasers and buzzers, motors, cogs, gears, batteries and wheels.

Hunterville School had two teams that had progressed to the recent semi-final in Feilding, and they finished first and second among teams from the Manawatu, Wanganui and Southern Hawke's Bay.

Today they join the first five placed teams in the final. "We are enormously proud of them," said principal Stephen Lewis.