Rockwell Automation Engineer's Week

St. Gabriel’s unpack a mystery at Rockwell Automation Asia Pacific Business Center (Singapore)

Fun-filled. Eye-opening. The Mystery Challenge had it all.
 
On 22 Feb 2019, 15 students from St. Gabriel’s Secondary School experienced a fun-filled and exciting challenge at Rockwell Automation during its Engineers week. This year, the company extended their invitation to non-employees with an aim to foster creativity and innovation among the youngsters in the community. 
 
On the event day, there were two main challenges: 1) A robotic arm retrieval system for Rockwell Automation staff and 2) A mystery challenge open to all staff and students from St. Gabriel’s Secondary. The second challenge was kept a mystery until the day itself where the rules and requirements were revealed!
 
It was a tall order! Participants had to design and build a propeller, which had to be attached to a wind turbine generator. An industrial fan would then create the wind necessary to drive the turbine. The current generated by the wind turbine would be measured and the team that recorded the highest current reading would win!

Rising to the Challenge, the 15 students from St. Gabriel’s split themselves into three groups of five members. And in just two hours, they managed to complete their research as well as design, and build the propellers with cardboard and basic stationary items! All three teams came up with unique designs.

Believe it or not, in the end, it was one of the teams from St. Gabriel’s Secondary that emerged the champion – as their propeller clocked the highest current reading - beating even the engineers from Rockwell Automation (although needless to say, the advice from Rockwell’s staff was instrumental in the victory!). 

Each member of the winning team won for themselves a pair of WiFi-enabled power plugs which was presented at the prize presentation!

Science Centre Singapore and St. Gabriel’s Secondary School are grateful to Rockwell Automation for the opportunity to participate in their Challenge! Aside from the thoughtful prizes, the most valuable take-away was definitely the fantastic exposure at Rockwell Automation, which believes strongly in cultivating interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) at a young age.

With continued efforts to support STEM in Singapore and a vision to attract the younger generation to join the engineering work force, Rockwell Automation plans to extend the invitation to more students in the future to participate annually in their Challenge event. We look forward to another great opportunity provided by Rockwell Automation next year!