Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award: Commendation

Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award 2015: Commendation

The Design & Innovation Club pursued the Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award in 2015. This competition seeks creativity and originality among the young generation. This competition encourages young inventors to stimulate their minds to come up with solutions to problems we encounter daily. This promotes scientific and technological research in Singapore. One of our entries was selected for a Commendation Award.

The Easily Tilted Trolley was invented by our members, Goh Ee Xiong and Xie Tianyu. The main objective of the invention is to help make it easier for the janitors, who are quite senior in age, to lift a trolley up a curb. Ee Xiong and Tianyu observed the janitors of our school having a hard time pushing a trolley up a curb. They spoke to them and further researched the problem. They found out that it is extremely difficult and tedious for the janitors to push heavily loaded trolleys up a curb. This inflicts agonizing pain to their joints, causes backaches and makes them slouch for extended periods of time. Therefore, to make their life easier,  Ee Xiong and Tianyu came up with the idea of an easily tilted trolley.

Ee Xiong and Tianyu with their invention

It is extremely easy to operate. All you have to do is apply a little force to the lever attached to the base of the trolley and the trolley would be tilted. It has been proven with Principle of Moments that, with the lever, lesser force is needed to push the trolley.

National Junior Solar Sprint Competition 2015

The National Junior Solar Sprint Competition (NJSSC) is a race competition of mini-solar cars designed and assembled by secondary school students using their ingenuity, innovativeness and creativity. Participants are encouraged to use the principles of mathematics and science in this fun, hands-on educational activity.

We enjoyed participating in the competition and were able to learn and explore new things. I get to learn things such as the weight of the car would affect its speed and during the process of making the car and preparing for the competition,we managed to learn how to control the car properly. The most memorable part of this whole competition was when we managed to take the third prize. Even though we did not win the first prize,we were still happy that we were able to make the school proud and our hard work paid off.

National Earthquake Competition 2015

Singapore Polytechnic's School of Architecture & the Built Environment organised the 7th National Earthquake Competition 2015 for all upper secondary school students in Singapore. The competition aims to generate students’ interests on the importance of Civil Engineering in designing earthquake-resistant buildings and earthquake disaster mitigation. It involves student teams using MDF (Medium Density Fibre) timber strips and boards, glue and cotton strings to design and fabricate models of earthquake-resistant buildings. On the day of competition, models will be tested on a 2-Dimensional Earthquake Simulator to determine the winners according to the technical specifications and competition rules.

We sent two teams to participate in the competition this year and this is what they say:

"On 8 Apirl 2015 we participated in the National Earthquake Competition(NEC). On 27 Apirl we got news that we were placed second. We started training for this competition long before the actual day. Our helpful and patient seniors taught us all the skills needed. Cutting the timber strips and baseboard,gluing all kinds of columns,tying the whole structure together... All these skills are extremely important in building a structure and we, as beginners,under the careful teaching of our seniors,soon learnt these skills by heart through countless practices.

Throughout the time spent, we gradually noticed that, every role is as important as the other. This is because without anyone, the structure will not be strong. If one mistake was made during the building process, the whole structure may collapse in the end. Everyone of us was very serious when working, just in case all out hard work does not pay off.

Communication among team members was also crucial. To prevent mishaps and save time. We must make sure that we manage the time as well as ensure whether that the others are doing the right thing. The communication between us did not just ensures that we do the correct thing, but it also encouraged others. Without realizing, we were growing stronger as a team.

We may have won but we have learnt so much more. Although we have been cut and burned, we could not be more grateful when holding the trophy." ~ Davin, Chenjing, Deriando & Christine

"For National Earthquake Competition we had to sacrifice a lot of our time to practise for the actual competition we worked hard for the competition so that we would get satisfying results. We had to stay back for training during our march holidays. We worked tirelessly and built structure after structure.When it was time to build the final structure, we had to make sure the things we did were up to standard. When we were done with the structure, we were anxious and afraid that our efforts would be in vain. Finally, it was time. We were invited to Singapore Polytechnic for the prize presentation. Our  team won the first prize. We were pleased with out results. It was all worth it." ~ RouTeng, Alexander, Antonio & Fei Tat