The K’NEX challenge by Darius Maiuga

The day started with me arriving at Harrison’s house so that he could take William and I to the school in which we would compete in. Gratefully, we all agreed to discuss our course of action once we had got there; Harrison’s mum chaperoned us to the rest group and the adventure began…

 

As we stepped into the HUGE hall I marvelled at the sheer size of the gargantuan hall and I (with the rest of the team as well) actually had to stand there for a few seconds so that we could take it all in. The place was massive! What’s more, many tables were dotted around the hall and they were all laden with a diverse variety of pieces so exotic and rare that none of us had seen them EVER before. Although we were the only group to have arrived, the headmaster still announced that we were allowed to sort our pieces into groups however when the actual competition began we would have to dismantle everything we had built. So we began to sort the pieces…

 

The hands of everyone in our team were a hazy blur and as we were just finishing to sort the pile of tiny blue pieces when the headmaster announced that anything built was to be dismantled. He also told us about what we were going to be building. In a loud voice he announced that we were to be building a rock ship that was going to be taking ten men (or women to Mars). After showing us many very confusing diagrams of epic spaceships he told us about the many things that were going to be inside the spaceship to sustain and keep the humans alive to Mars and back.

Then he got to what we were going to do…

We were to (surprise, surprise) build a spaceship out of K’NEX but as the inside would be quite hard to build he said we could simply draw the different levels and floors on an A3 piece of paper that was already sitting on the table. He said we had to spend the first 10 minutes drawing the insides but after that we were allowed to start building. We rushed to the pencils on our table and off we went!

 

I grabbed a pencil and started to draw the bedroom, kitchen, fitness area and practically everything else. The others were doing similar things and before I had even finished, the headmaster announced to start building however we could still continue to draw. It didn’t matter; in the short space of time that he had talked I finished drawing and started to build!

 

I won’t go through the whole process of the building as I might bore you but I will say that we had many ideas for the main base and had to keep rebuilding it again and again many, many times until we settled on a slightly strange space-caravan look but we decided it was fine! The mechanical arm, solar panels and other miscellaneous attachments went first and we were all very pleased about how it was all coming along.

 

At the snack break the most AMAZING cookies I have ever tasted were served. Melting chocolate chips were covering it and the chocolate dough was SERIOUSLY heavenly. Over the divine cookies and orange squash we talked about things that would give us an edge over the other teams. I randomly, as a joke suggested covering the whole thing in aluminium. The others took it seriously. “Yeah man, lets do it!” agreed Cameron vigorously. The others were also agreeing. I put my hands up and said something smart like “Err, ok …” We also settled on creating Mars, the Moon, the Sun and some random asteroids.

The chocolate dough was SERIOUSLY heavenly!

When we came back we built and did all the things we had talked about during break and when we were almost finished a man came and interviewed us about the inside of our rocket. I remember him being quite impressed and writing some stuff on a jet-black clipboard. Those last few moments were a frantic blur as we tried to complete everything in time. However, I do remember that in the last few seconds Williams put my other cars back on the spaceship! The initial judging is and will always be a blur but then the moment of truth had come. “With a clear 32 points Warren Road came third place” cries of joy were uttered and that was the end of the adventure.

 

The full team included:

• Darius Maiuga – 6S
• William Weaver – 6S
• Harrison Errington – 6S
• Jonathan Birkenshaw – 6P
• Shayaan Sohanpal – 6P
• Robbie Dixon – 6P