Days before the EPro8 competition Arden, Neviah, Linda and Anahera from Room 18 were chosen to represent the school in the EPro 8 engineering competition.

We arrived at the Nelson College Hall at 5 o’clock and the judge, Kelvin explained our challenges. We decided on the vending machine challenge. After a challenging start we got 40 points under our belts. During the process of testing, the vending machine we managed to blow six fuses - Kelvin did not like that!

Eventually we became tied with the Rai Reptiles, both with 130 points and in a final attempt to beat them we decided to make Uncle Alberts bed which was 50 points. This was 10 more points than the Rai Reptiles. With 6 minutes left Linda and Arden started creating the bed while the other two started dissembling our vending machine. We got to 40 seconds left and we chucked on the whiteboard mattresses. We pushed our buzzer and Kelvin came to check out our bed. He then swiped the mattress (whiteboards) off the frame and said, “No one wants to sleep on an unstable mattress.” Arden then responded with “But I would still sleep on it.” We were expecting Kelvin to come back and give us points for our cheeky sense of humour, but sadly that did not happen. That was the funniest ending of EPro8 ever.

Overall, we had a fun experience at EPro8, and we are incredibly grateful that we got chosen.

We feel we did have a slight disadvantage, as many schools in this competition have their own sets of EPro8 equipment to practise with. We think having our own sets of EPro8 would be amazing and then everyone could have a turn using and learning with this amazing resource.

If you would like to sponsor Waimea Intermediate, so we can purchase a set of EPro8 equipment or would like some more information please contact genr@waimeaint.school.nz or jot@waimeaint.school.nz