FOUR students from St Columba Anglican School (SCAS) have taken out the 2018 National Choose Maths competition in Melbourne.
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The competition was themed ‘Our World Needs Maths’ and the students wowed judges with their video uncovering the maths behind pirouettes, Pringles, agriculture and architecture. The group was flown to Victoria to accept medals and $1000 on Friday, September 7.
Mathematics students Tait McIntyre, Kera Mumford, Kiarna Best and Anneke Oliver took home a Student Excellence Award for their video titled ‘The Maths Revolution’ and they all said it was an unexpected achievement.
“We were all so excited to take home a prize but I think we were also really surprised because all of the videos our class submitted to the competition were great,” Tait said.
“The theme of the video was supposed to be ‘Our World Needs Maths’ and we really wanted to show how maths was used by everyone, everyday.
“We all have passions outside our love for mathematics and we really wanted to bring that into the video.”
“So we decided to focus on dance, architecture, food and agriculture and because we are all passionate about each area and I think that is why we did well,” Kiarna said.
“For dance we looked at the angles of dancers as they jump and spin, for architecture we looked at a building in London that was built to be more energy efficient and for food we looked at the special shape of pringles and why they were made that way,” Anneke said.
The semester long project involved the year 9 extension mathematics class said coordinator of mathematics at SCAS Dr Janine Stewart.
“I try to tell students that mathematics is critical to society and for me the sad thing is so many people don’t realise how much mathematics influences everyday life,” Dr Stewart said.
“From logging on and using your email to driving a car, mathematics is all around us and I really wanted the students to engage the world around them for this project.
“I had students explore a wide range of topics from space junk to water security and use mathematics to explain structures.”
Dr Stewart said the students had embraced the project and it was the icing on the cake for the girls’ team to win.
“All the students had been working for two terms on the project and we tried to include people outside our faculty,” she said.
“We had a film festival where the students showed the school community their video and received feedback from other students before we submitted the official videos and for one of our teams to win competing against over 1000 entries is fantastic.”
