What is the fastest humanly possible time for the Olympic 100m freestyle event?

As usual, the competition question is open-ended. This competition is all about how you interpret the question and what assumptions you make. The questions are always related to topical issues and, with the Olympics starting on the same day as the competition, this problem is certainly relevant.

This year the competition was held on Saturday 6th August and the Kaiapoi High School 2016 team dived right in to researching, mathematical modelling and writing up their solution.

Jacob Sullivan, Dion Morrison, Harry Dawber and Finlay Mably braved the cold Saturday morning chill to use some serious swimming stats to solve this year's challenge question. They spent the morning researching the topic, did some mathematical modelling and wrote up a report, detailing all their work and research.

Nine hours sounds like forever, but it all went swimmingly with Mrs Sue-Tang’s encouragement, hot drinks, candy and cookie breaks, and Mr Hanrahan delivering the chips and pizzas.

6pm is suddenly minutes away, the day has gone without a splash as the final finishing touches are added and next thing you know the competition is over and it's time to go home. If you see the team around you can ask them the answer to the question and see if you have what it takes to break an Olympic swimming record in the future!