The Hot Pots – a name, idea and ultimately a smart scientific and environmental success story. “Hot Pots” was formed in response to the challenge of winning the Year Nine Science Fair and once formed; Hot Pots launched itself on a roller coaster journey to the grand final.
We had different opinions about the project. One of us wanted to find out what was the best material to use to insulate a house, another one wanted to do a Solar cooking experiment – we just couldn’t make our minds up. Then out of nowhere, as we were flipping through the pages of our science book, we saw the title Solar Cooling. It caught us by surprise, because how was it possible to cool something with the sun? So we read more and learnt about Solar Cooling, and realised this was something that would interest teachers and students alike. Even though it took us sometime to figure out a hypothesis and method, we persisted with what we were doing.
The experiment turned out brilliantly, and our class presentation was very simple but effective. A week later, it was announced that The Hot Pots were through to the grand final, and we were over the moon. This was just the start of a nerve-racking week though!
From Monday to Wednesday, we worked harder than ever. All we talked and thought about was the final of the science fair. We improved our PowerPoint, and edited our scripts. We also got great advice from our class and science teachers. We decorated our poster and practiced our presentation over and over. We thought we were ready as ever…until we met our competition on the day of the science fair finals.
Words really cannot describe how nervous we were! Just imagine, speaking in front of three, scary judges, nearly all the science teachers, your parents and your fellow classmates; that’s exactly what we had to do! Our competition was seven other groups, who looked like they had done this a million times! As everything started to get going, the first group went ahead and did their presentation. It was great, and so were the other presentations.
“Now we have 9.8, with Tina Beacroft, Sahar Bhurtun and Owen Beattie” said Mr Chiu. We all went forward in front of all the staring eyes, and performed our presentation. It actually wasn’t as bad as we all thought it would be! We spoke our lines clearly, and our PowerPoint worked without any flaws. The audience seemed to be enjoying the presentation, and by the end of the 5 minutes we were allotted, it was over!
Then there was the agonising 20 minutes of deliberation. The judges emerged from behind the shelves of books and spoke first about the two runners up. Our group’s name wasn’t called had we been ignored? Was there still a chance of that glittering prize? YES! The winner of the Year Nine Science Fair is 9… point…. 8! Victory, joy, back-slapping, kisses and prizes. But the real prize knew that we’d worked together on a worthwhile project – environmentally and scientifically sound.
The prize of a $100 voucher for HMV (for each of us) was lovely, but not nearly as great as the feeling of winning the entire science fair. It also made us feel proud to win for our class, 9.8. It was a great experience for us, the “Hot Pots”. We lots of fun and we couldn’t have done it without our superb teachers!
Authors: The “Hot Pots” Team (Tina Beacroft, Sahar Bhurtun and Owen Beattie)
Editor: Austin Liew
