Overview & Rules

Outline

The Robogals Science Challenge is a competition that will encourage the use of science in projects produced by girls together with a parent (or other mentor) across Australia. Videos of these projects will be submitted online. The competition will span across five months, culminating in an awards ceremony where the best 12 groups will be invited and the winners announced.

The Challenge

Your challenge submission consists of two parts: A video showcasing your project and a short questionnaire. Both of these are submitted through this website.

Girls between ages 5 to 18 can enter the competition, individually or as a team of 2, accompanied by a parent-mentor who is above 18 years of age. Only entrants from Australia will be eligible for prizes.

Age groups

The competition is divided into 3 age groups and entries are judged according to that level:

  • Primary: Ages 5-8
  • Intermediate: Ages 9-12
  • Senior: Ages 13-18

Prizes

The top 3 parent-daughter pairs in each category, plus the "crowd favourite" as voted online, will be invited to a science and engineering weekend tour.

There will also be prizes for each discipline (mechanical, civil, software, electrical and mechatronics, environmental, and chemical) in each age group. See the prizes page for more details.

Project guidelines

The theme for this year’s challenge is community. Your challenge is to come up with a creation to benefit your community and implement it (or a prototype of it). This can be done by:

  • Identifying a problem in your community and come up with a solution to the problem.
  • Think about what you would like to see happen in your community

See project ideas for further clarification of what is regarded as a science project and some pointers to get you started.

Video guidelines

Each video is to be submitted online and will star a mentor and up to 2 mentees, talking about and demonstrating their project. In the maximum 4-minute long video, the young girl(s) should do at least 3/4 of the talking. The mentor's role is primarily to encourage their mentee to participate and to help with dangerous tasks (use of the stove, for example).

The girl(s) should answer the following questions in the video:

  1. What have you learnt from this project?
  2. A comment about Robogals.

Question 2 is to ensure that the video has been made specifically for this competition, and not used from elsewhere.

The online questionnaire will ask the following questions:

  1. Why did you choose this project?
  2. What did you enjoy most about the project?
  3. What have you learned from the project?
  4. How did your parent or mentor help you?
  5. For the intermediate age group (9-12): briefly explain the underlying scientific theories behind the project, why you chose this method and equipment, and whether the experiment is repeatable and why?
  6. For the senior age group (13-18): briefly explain the underlying scientific theories behind the project, why you chose this method and equipment, and whether the experiment is repeatable and why, and any formulas or calculations used in the project?

If it is not practical to film the actual project, your video could show photos together with an explanation of the project.

Voting (for crowd favourite)

Voting starts on this website as soon as the video has been submitted and vetted by the competition organisers (or from 9 July, whichever is later). Voting is limited to 1 vote per computer per day.

Judging

The judges will rank the entries using a scoring method based on the following:

  • Answering of questions
  • Creativity of project
  • Emphasis on the young girl's work
  • For the intermediate age group (9-12): a demonstrated understanding of the theory behind the project
  • For the senior age group (13-18): a demonstrated understanding of the theory behind the project and the formulas or calculations used in the project

Registration

There is a registration fee of $10 to help cover our costs of running the challenge. Registrations open 15 May through this website, and then submit your video when you're ready. A pdf registration form is also available for those who are not comfortable with revealing their credit card information through PayPal. Register by 30 June to receive an early bird prize!

Key dates

Tuesday 15 May: Competition launches
30 June: Early bird registration deadline
Early July: Videos go live; voting commences
October: Final entry deadline
December: Award ceremony

And finally...

The most important aspect of this competition is that everyone enjoys their experiments and sees that science and engineering can be fun! Everything we do starts and ends with that principle.


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