Melville Senior High School leaves other schools in the dust during electric vehicle challenge

MELVILLE Senior High School students felt the need for speed last week.

The school claimed the Class A Junior School EV Challenge when the electric car race meet was held at the Wundowie Racetrack on October 27.

The drivers were Year 7s Aaron Benness and Steven Phillips and Year 8 student Brian Caffrey although there was a dedicated team behind the students who worked to build the cars.

Teachers Greg Allin, Mat Lord and Dion Manby were there at every turn and external educators were invited to come to the school on several occasions to demonstrate various braking designs, machine operations, driving skills, electrical wiring and calculations, regenerative braking and advanced current flow techniques.

Steven said he enjoyed the process of building the car over many months.

“I enjoyed the teamwork and social side of working together,” he said.

“The experience of racing on the day was great, there was so much excitement and it was fun to work together.”The school’s Class B Senior car placed fourth after a blown tyre in practice which saw them start in 25th place while the Class Open car finished fourth in their category as well.

Mr Manby said the project enriched STEM learning for the participating students.

“It promotes positive relationships across years and cultivates a powerful ownership of the students’ learning as they develop their own ideas designs into realised vehicles that they can test in competition,” he said.