Cosmos Education Kenya: “3 rd Chemsha bongo ……Engineering Challenges” Update

Chemsha bongo ……Engineering Challenges” Update

Location: St Johns High school.

Activity: Chemsha Bongo

Date: 9th October, 2007
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Today’s session saw us go back to St Johns High school for the second chemsha bongo engineering challenges.

All the form three students at St Johns were present for today’s session and four members from Cosmos Education Kenya were present, these were Bridgit Syombua, Evalyn Mwihia, Alice Dande and Kevin Kinyua.

The representatives hard at work trying to formulate words for the first challenge

We started off by reminding the students of out 3 golden rules: -

Rule no 1:-If we speak too quickly for you to follow, tell us to slow down (with a special hand signal.)

Rule no 2:-The key to all of science: You must ask questions.

Rule Rule no3:-The key to learning: You must have fun.

We then broke the students up into 4 groups which the students named Banju, Israel, Chicha and Sanchez and this led us into the first challenge. This was a simple challenge and a test of the student’s prowess in English. The students were given five letters to work with these were B O W L E, with these letters the students were asked to create as many English words as possible from these five letters. Each word was to have a minimum of 3 letters and no repetition was allowed.

Each group selected a representative who was to per take the challenge. Banju group emerged the Victor with Leon, their representative managing 10 correct words. This earned the group 10 points and Leon a reward.

The first challenge had the teams energized and each team determined to win the second challenge. The second challenge was the “Connect the dots” brain teaser. In this challenge the students were to join a series of nine dots using only four straight lines. This activity was aimed at stimulating critical thinking and to think outside the box.
The teams were given ample time to discuss the solution and send a representative to partake the challenge.
This challenge proved easier than we had anticipated as Cyrus from the Sanchez team had it figured out in less than a minute. This earned his team 10 points and a reward for himself.

The third challenge, “Spaghetti Levers” was a test of ingenuity and team work. Each team was given 3 items: - spaghetti straws, some tape and a desk to work on. The challenge was to anchor the straws to the table a using the tape and use the tape again to join the spaghetti straws together and build a structure that extends from the table either vertically or horizontally. The winning team was the one that created the longest structure. In this challenge Chicha emerged the victors.

Students from group Banju working out a way forward for the spaghetti levers challenge

The final challenge was the Egg drop challenge. This challenge was a test in team work, and ingenuity. In this challenge an egg was tied with a sting and tape onto the ceiling the students were given an A4 sized paper and a matchbox. The challenge was to get the egg off the ceiling without touching the egg, string or tape. The egg was to drop in the piece of paper without breaking.
Breaking the rules attracted a point deduction and in the end Israel had the most points and emerged the winner.

The egg drop challenge.

Overall Chichi and Sanchez tied in first place with 25 points each. To get an overall victor a game of rock paper scissors was played with between 2 members of the 2 teams. In a best of 3 Kamau from Chichi got 2 points leading chichi to victory.