Adventure's in Tanzania: Maria Nyerere Girl's Science Competition

These last few weeks have been spent trying to wrap up the semester, but in the midst of it all, we planned and put on a Njombe Regional Science Competition.

Before the regional competition could take place, we had to first conduct school-based competitions to determine which students would travel to Njombe to represent their school. The competition was only for Form II students, because as they enter Form III next year, they will have to choose to study science or art subjects, and we hoped this opportunity to see science in a fun and interesting way would encourage more students to choose science.

On Saturday, May 10, the 33 interested Form II students arrived at the school laboratory. They were allowed to choose their team of 3 and enter the room. They were then given the instructions and objective of their task: Egg Drop. They had 45 minutes and various locally available materials to construct a device to drop from various heights to keep the egg from breaking.

the instruction sheet I made, and yes, they laughed at my drawing skills

A group of students working together to construct their egg drop device

All groups got their pictures taken with their device. They were all smiles and proud of what they made.

After the 45 minutes of construction, I climbed up onto the desk to test each device. The groups had to explain the reasoning behind their construction, then the egg was placed and it was dropped.

Dropping the devices from the first test height

The eggs that survived the first drop were then taken outside to be tested again. I shimmied halfway up one of the most questionable ladders I have ever seen and tested the remaining devices.

Testing the devices from the second height

And since too many survived even that fall, I climbed to the very top of the ladder and braced myself against the wall and dropped the remaining devices. At the end of it all, 4 of 11 groups still had intact eggs.

The third and final testing height. I couldn't get any higher!

We then reassembled inside for the final event of the day which was Sudoku. The students still got to work in teams and I wrote an easy Sudoku puzzle on the board for them. The first team to win got a prize, and the first 2 teams of the 4 that had surviving eggs would be our representatives.
But after about an hour, only 1 of the 4 teams was able to complete the puzzle correctly, so it came down to a lightning quiz round between the remaining 3 teams.