On Tuesday the 17th of August, Robogals Melbourne held the Robogals Science and Engineering Expo, in partnership with National Science Week.

The event was attended by girls schools as well as a few individual families, who heard about our Expo in the Herald Sun article titled 'Robogals to the Rescue', published one week before the event.

The day started off at 10am with a bridge building exercise. The aim was to build a bridge out of newspaper and sticky tape that would hold up a 600ml water bottle. This activity was modeled off an engineering assignment, which asked students to construct a bridge using only 2 pieces of newspaper and a metre strip of sticky tape. At the Science Expo we provided more than 2 sheets of newspaper and a strip of sticky tape. The bridges constructed were quite unique, from a simple beam bridge to a very interesting suspension bridge.

At 11am it was on to viewing the displays. We had 7 groups being rotated around the 7 displays which were:

• a MakerBot – a printer that prints a 3D plastic model from your computer
• a Mid Size League Robocup robot – a soccer robot
• a Visual Haptics Game – it helps rehabilitate stroke patients for minor motor control
• 4 LEGO robots – a robogator, a humanoid, a ball shooter and a colour-sorter, all built by our volunteers

After lunch there were talks from Mechatronics Engineering PhD student Denise Lam, Chemical Engineering PhD student Sher Leen Ng, SKM representative Giselle Gonzales, and Robogals founder Marita Cheng.

The event concluded at 2:30pm. We received great feedback: many found the day an eye opening experience; the highlight for most students was the MakerBot and the talks, particularly Marita's talk.

We would like to extend a huge thank you to:

• for providing and showing their displays: Luke Weston from Hackerspace, Rob Skillington, Darwin Tat-Ming Lau and David Jahshan
• for enlightening us with their talks: Denise Lam, Sher Leen Ng and Giselle Gonzales
• from the National Science Week: Helen Gardiner, Carly Siebentritt, Tania Ewing and Stephanie Mollica
• from the Melbourne School of Engineering: Michelle Bellino, as well as Jamie Evans and Jackie Brissonnette for their continued support
• and all 19 of the volunteers (pictured above) who helped make the day run smoothly

Newspaper article: Robogals to the Rescue, Herald Sun, 10 Aug 2010, Page 56