EPro8 Challenge

The EPro8 Challenge is a competition, an engineering and problem solving race, where school teams use life sized props, equipment and problem solving to compete in challenges that could include; unusual experiments, engineering, art, electronics or mathematics.  

Heats are being held throughout Wellington, with 12 teams of 4 competing in each heat to earn the most points. The top four teams from each heat qualify for the Wellington wide semifinals and finals. 

Amesbury School entered 2 teams in the years 5-6 category and recently attended the heat being held at Raroa Intermediate.  

• Awesome Amesbury: Artem, Lucy, Melanie and Avin (placed 5th equal)
  
• Amesbury Brainwaves: Phoebe, Logan, Abbie and Emile (placed 11th equal)

Each team was located at a workstation, which contained an assortment of equipment, including gears, pulleys, weights, tools, aluminium framing, motors and electronics.  

The teams got to choose which challenges they wanted to do, knowing that the harder challenges were worth more points, but the time to do them was limited, so some strategy was involved in deciding which challenges they could complete the fastest.

We discovered that the EPro8 Challenge isn't necessarily something that we could study or prepare for,  or even that the smartest kids did better.  A big part of the competition was about how teams worked together to explore and experiment in order to solve the challenges.  Most of all, it was a really fun experience!