News from the Maths Department – Aug 2022

New Zealand Engineering Science Competition

New Zealand Engineering Science competition is an annual problem solving competition run by the University of Auckland for secondary school students throughout New Zealand. The competition requires a team of students to develop an appropriate answer for an open-ended science question using skills and knowledge often taught in Mathematics and Physics classes.

On Saturday the 6th of August, eight students from Western Springs College formed into two teams to tackle the following open-ended question “What is the largest payload that could be launched into orbit by a slingshot?”. Each team was required to develop and evaluate a mathematical model to help them solve the problem and submit their answers in the form of a report.

The Mathematics Department would like to acknowledge Minh Anh Tran, Arthur O’Callahan, Arushi Gupta, Sophia Collins, Liam Macken, Oliver Burton, Jed Burgess and Amelia Chitty for representing Western Springs College in the annual New Zealand Engineering Science Competition. The results and the winner of the competition will be announced on the University of Auckland website in early November.

Y13 Calculus Exam preparation workshops

To help our Year 13 Calculus students with exam preparation, the Mathematics Department started running exam revision workshops on Monday lunchtimes in the Kiwi Glass teaching space, L3 KHCL starting from Week 3 of Term 3. These workshops will continue to run until the end of term 3. Interested students can attend these workshops to tackle exam style questions and receive needed help from a Calculus teacher.