By Jessica Anstice
A wonderful team of intelligent, forward thinking students from St Margaret’s and Berwick Grammar School have been selected as semi-finalists in an international STEM-focussed contest.
Team MISS, Megan Ayagama, Imaya Rajakaruna, Senara Peiris and Siya Sehgal, were excited to be acknowledged from hundreds of entries from schools across Australia in the Texas Instruments TI Codes Contest.
The contest was launched in Australia for the first time in August, with Australian students in Years 7 to 10 jumping at the opportunity to use their STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Maths) skills to automate or optimise a process related to food.
Navigating a start, stop school year and virtual collaboration, their design of the ‘Watrix’, a smart watering system and solution, is a sprinkler system that stores rainwater for plants using solar energy.
“Being acknowledged from hundreds of entries across Australia gives us a feeling adrenalin, empowerment, recognition and these feelings have helped motivate us into making our invention 10 times better,” one team member said.
“At first, we didn’t have a clue of what we were going to create, as so many of our ideas have already been invented.
“However, after what felt like hours of branching out on different ideas, we finally came up with the Wartrix.”
The creative invention helps people acknowledge and use water wisely, all while using renewable energy.
It consists of a pipe, a 20-litre storage tub, solar panels, mist nozzle, a sprinkler and a lot of TI gadgets coded in order to make it work.
“We came across a lot of difficulties when trying to find what we could use to make it, how we were going to do it, if it made sense or not, or even if it was going to work,” she recalled.
“But we as a team worked together and overcame these challenges and found solutions.
“We worked together on Zoom designing our plans, since we couldn’t meet in person. It was during strict lockdown.”
As the team has been shortlisted, they will need to bring their plans to life by building a prototype of the Wartrix.
Using technology provided by TI, they will put all the pieces together.
“We are learning about coding to make the system work, using the Python language,” she explained.
“Once everything is set up and working, we’ll make a video to submit to TI showing them the product. This is the final step.”
To follow team MISS please head to the https://education.ti.com/au/codescontest website
