Marbles in Motion: Girls in STEM Explore Engineering Fun

While the Discovery Science and Technology Centre continues to delight visitors with its hugely popular LEGO exhibition, the Girls in STEM Club has commenced another exciting term focused on engineering challenges. The first session? Marble runs, where gravity, creativity and a little bit of chaos all came together!

After watching a short video of domino effects and objects in motion, the girls were set a deceptively simple challenge: using only the provided materials, build a marble run that would keep the marble on track from start to finish. Working in teams of two or three, they quickly got to work attaching channels to boards with skewers and masking tape. Trial and error soon became the engineering method of the day!

There were marbles flying off the track, surprise sharp turns, and plenty of laughter as teams tested, redesigned and improved their creations. It was amazing to watch the girls problem-solve, observe what worked best, and fix trouble spots as they expanded their runs section by section. At times the room sounded like a mini engineering workshop, mixed with cheers every time a marble successfully completed a difficult section.

The girls then shared ideas about the materials and techniques they had used, inspiring each other to improve their designs. Some ambitious engineers even attempted double-marble runs starting from different points at the same time, while others experimented with tunnels, steep drops and carefully calculated direction changes.

The final challenge was to keep a marble moving for seven seconds, much harder than it sounds when speed, slopes and gravity are involved. Seven seconds suddenly felt very long when a marble decided to leap dramatically off the track halfway through the run! Despite the occasional runaway marble, the girls showed persistence, adaptability and excellent teamwork as they refined their designs under time pressure.

Although not every marble reached the finish line, the real success of the session was the creativity, resilience and enthusiastic exchange of ideas. Most importantly, the girls discovered that engineering is not just about getting things right the first time, it is about testing, learning, improving and having fun along the way.