Nationals Finals 2023
Year 3 – 4
First Place
Automatic Flowerpot Shade
Anlan Zheng
Good News Lutheran School
My project is about making an automatic flower pot shade for my Mum. My Mum had to keep moving the flower pots around so that they were out of the sun. Sometimes when I helped her move the flower pot I would break the pots. I talked to my Dad about it and we decided I would design and create an automatic flower pot shade to help us all.
I have used the Design Process to design, create, test and improve my design. The automatic flower pot shade has an small umbrella which automatically opens to cover the flower when the temperature is too hot, over 20 degrees, and close when it cooled down under 20 degrees. I am programming a circuit board to tell the switch to open or close the umbrella.
We are using Arduino IDE with C++ for coding and connecting this to the motor driver, stepper motor, OLED display, buttons to manage the device and the umbrella.
Second Place
Extinction is not an Option: Zoo Enclosure for the Sumatran Rhino
Lucy Sultana, Erica Natawardaja
Loreto Kirribilli
We have been learning about sustainable practices that can support the natural vegetation, climate and native animals of Australia and Indonesia (Sumatra Rainforest). We have been using our critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication to plan, design and create a digital zoo enclosure for the Sumatran Rhino which is critically endangered. There are under 80 left and one of the rarest species in the world. This enclosure aims to address the specific needs of the Sumatran Rhino while also considering the impact that climate and human actions have on living things. We hope to better inform people about the Sumatran Rhinos and what we must do to protect them.
Third Place
Pet Care Trainer
Evelyn Edwards, Beemer Johnson-Ryan, Lily Lavell, Xavier Maney
Montello Primary School
Our friends inspired the project because they have dyslexia, and we are trying to take the stress out of dyslexia. Watching our friends struggle with their learning made us realise dyslexia is more than people think. Our project is an app to gain self-confidence, mindfulness and a text conversion feature. We also made a reading tool. We used Tinkercad to design our reading tool, Polar Cloud to slice the .stl image and our the FlashForge Adventurer 3 to print them. We made our app prototype in Keynote and we are now building the app in Scratch. We went through lots of designs for our reading tool and app and you can see this in our video.
Year 5 – 6
First Place
Super Shower Timer
Isobel Tomlins, Daphne Lai, Misato Heming, Hannah Bacigalupo
Wideview Public School
Clean drinking water is one of the world’s most precious resources. How much clean drinking water do you think Australia uses just on showers every day?
Our project, The Super Shower Timer, is designed to gently get someone out of the shower by using coloured LEDs to warn the person when they should be getting out of the shower.
= First Place
Naturabot
Owen Sim, Spencer Djurasevich, Leon Poblocki, Finn Gilbert-Rugless
Scotch College Adelaide Junior School
First we looked at what the main natural disasters are that affect South Australians and then the current warning systems; Alert SA, The BOM, SES in SA. When comparing warning systems, we found that the data changed between systems – We thought this might create anxiety for some people. We also looked at how people were warned during serious natural disasters so that they could evacuate or respond in the right way. We had lots of questions for experts but found it difficult to get responses to our questions. We interviewed 2 students who were affected by the 2019 Cudlee Creek bushfires. One of the students runs a charity for people affected by bushfires and has now extended to all natural disasters – Naturally Brave. They currently don’t have a website or app so would love for us to create one for them. We are also investigating including a chatbot which people can chat to post natural disaster. Our senior school head of Digital Technologies Dr Jackson is mentoring us when training our chatbot (we’re hoping to use Poe platform with adult support). We need to understand how chatbots work before understanding how to train it.
Third Place
AirSmart – Air Pollution Analysis
Yuna Ebrahimi, Sebastian Barlow, Pramaan Meena, Eyob Mamo
East Brisbane State School
Air pollution is a major problem for people with asthma and other respiratory problems. Annually, 6.7 million people die from air pollution issues globally . Recently, Brisbane has experienced high levels of air pollution, from planned vegetation burns, and increased vehicle traffic. Measured using the amount of air particulates PM2.5 and PM10, the levels experienced were hazardous to these sensitive groups. It is not only these one-off instances that can cause issues, like other urban centres, Brisbane has a high volume of vehicle and other emissions that can also cause problems depending on weather conditions.
Our project, the Air Pollution Monitor will monitor air quality within and outside the city. The monitor will use a gas sensor and Arduino to measure local air quality over time and compare the air pollution at key locations. This sensor is designed to show the difference in pollution levels between urban and semi-rural areas to highlight the need to reduce air pollution in these areas. We will also need to understand the main causes of pollution in certain areas. Our data will raise awareness about airborne pollutants and the significant risks they pose to members of our community.
Year 7 – 8
First Place
Purple – Mental Health
Milana Kumykova
Haileybury
At a time where mental health is on the decline, and over 320 teenagers are taking their own life per year, it is important to make it clear that these are things that should be talked about. However, as young people ourselves, we have found that not only is it not addressed properly, but we don’t find that people are exactly itching to open up to adults. Purple. is a chatbot designed for adolescents aged 12-17 years old, based in Australia, and it provides not only an anonymous experience for the user, but all information is credible and sourced from relevant sources, such as Beyond Blue. However, it doesn’t end there, as we at Purple. believe that positive experiences drive positive mental health, and many studies have backed this up. Therefore, we have partnered with Red Balloon and created a program that analyses all the data of users and then finds suitable experiences. Not to mention, funds raised from Purple Plus members will potentially make them eligible to win a fully funded experience from Red Balloon. Purple. isn’t just a chatbot – with it, we hope to promote positive mental health and let teenagers across Australia experience fun and pleasant memories.
Second Place
SmartFoods – An app to stop food waste
Hayden Kong
Pembroke School
Smartfoods is a helpful and functional app that helps people reduce food waste by reminding them when their food is going bad.
Here are the functions of my app:
- Home: A dashboard that displays data and widgets on how well you are at reducing food waste (compared to others and/or the past month)
- MyFood: A place where you add and display all the foods you have at home, including the amount and the expiry date. The app will remind you when one of your foods is about to expire or go bad. The system can automatically input expiry dates for fresh produce.
- MyLocal: A place where you can donate extra or spare food which is still in good condition with neighbours or food charities/banks
- Cookbook: A place where artificial intelligence searches the internet for recipes based on the foods you have(based on MyFood)
Food waste is a massive problem with many consequences. It leads to environmental damage, wastage of valuable resources, economic losses, world hunger, and more. We waste 7.6 million tonnes of food each year, 70% of this is perfectly edible. SmartFoods can prevent this by reminding you what foods will expire soon and allowing you to give spare or extra foods to other people or food banks.
= Second Place
Rain-Sensing Windows
Elise Nguyen
Marymount College
My project is a model of rain-sensing windows. It is a model of a cardboard house that is attached to an original design of a rain sensor. When sensing rain, it signals motors in the house to close windows. I chose my project because I often forget to close my windows when it rains, and wanted to see if this problem could be solved. Some problems I encountered were fixing my rain sensor and connecting the 2 circuits within my build.
Third Place
UV Light Hamper
Teru Nakazawa, Lily Roffe, Mikayla Whant, Piper Crutchley
Corrimal High School
Do you really think your towels are clean? Well guess what they’re not. Nearly 90% of your bathroom towels are infected with horrible bacteria, called coliform. This bacteria can make you extremely ill. But that’s not it, your bathroom towels can also hold a fatal bacteria, MRSA, this bacteria can become fatal and lead to death. Although this sounds scary, we have a solution. Our UV Light Hamper can be the life changing fix to your dirty, unhealthy, bacteria infected bath towels. The UV lights placed throughout the hamper, not only dry but disinfect your bath towels making them clean, healthy, safe and warm so you enjoy your towel when you get out of the shower.
Year 9 – 10
First Place
Sentralise
Declan Hofmeyr, Louis vanliefland
Independent Entry
Most students have at least 5 different platforms (i.e. Google Classroom, Sentral, Education Perfect, Email, Notion, etc.) that they need to access to find all their work. Sentralise uses a variety of APIs and alternative methods to bring all that data in one, beautiful, easy-to-use dashboard. Sentralise also offers Sentralise Study, a platform to find revision material, use practice tests and ask questions. For parents, Sentralise also offers the Parent Dashboard, where parents can see an overview of all their children’s assessments and other tasks.
= First Place
Lung Disease A.I.D (Artificially Intelligent Device)
Terrell Jensen
Marymount College
My project is an artificial intelligence which is capable of diagnosing lung diseases by analysing chest x-rays. I built the model in a form of Python known as “PyTorch”, used for A.I. development, I also built an accompanying “utils” document for command execution and data scraping on Google Images for x-ray samples to power the model. I chose my project because members of my family including me have suffered pneumonia before and my goal is to prevent people from experiencing the same difficulties others and I have. I’ve encountered an array of errors, problems, and glitches, from file save errors, traceback errors, and even overloading my desktop’s CPU. The problem I’m trying to solve is accurately diagnosing lung diseases without fail. I want to make this technology accessible across the country to benefit the health system. My goal is to act as a co-pilot for lung specialists rather than making them redundant. Features include able to diagnose six different conditions: healthy, viral pneumonia, bacterial pneumonia, lung cancer, tuberculosis, & chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. The system also is easily capable of adding more scans from clinics and other sources. If I were to do it next time I would build it in another program such as JavaScript TensorFlow for easy user interface construction.
Video of AI Working:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GUekTSQbiybsO6nrNzh17DrPAagQn9M9/view?usp=sharing
Third Place
PancVision- Pancreatic Tumor Segmentation Harnessing 3D UNet Architecture
Richard Ji
Burgmann Anglican School
This project involves the segmentation of tumors within the Pancreas. Using the 3D Unet Architecture in combination with another innovative algorithm, I aim to be able to accurately identify and isolate tumor regions within medical imaging data. This will enable more precise diagnosis and treatment planning for patients with pancreatic cancer.
Year 11 – 12
First Place
Machine Learning to Combat Antibiotic Resistance
Arlene Kaur Dhillon
John Monash Science School
Antibiotic resistance is a growing issue within medicine and science which has the potential to cause severe harm. Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, leading to their growth rather than halting it. Antibiotic resistance is putting the achievements of modern medicine at risk (World Health Organisation 2020), as more bacterial species develop resistance to antibiotics and spread globally, there is a decline in the development of new antibiotics due to the high costs, low profitability, and the likelihood of other bacterial species developing resistance. To
close the gap in antibiotic resistance research, a machine learning program was created, focusing on how scientists, researchers, and doctors can combat antibiotic resistance. The aim of the program is to use molecular descriptors to assess how specific chemical modification to the structure of the compound would alter its biological activity. The project was chosen by the urgency and increasing number of antibiotic resistance bacteria such as Methicillin – Resistant Streptococcus Aureus, Vancomycin resistant Enterococcus and multi – drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis Pneumoniae (BetterHealth). There were many problems which were encountered during this project.
However, the overall concept of the project was carried out enough to adhere to the aim and the purpose of the machine learning model.
Second Place
Superhero Spelling
Emma Wong
Brisbane Girls Grammar School
Superhero Spelling is an Interactive Learning Object (ILO) that facilitates engaging and meaningful spelling practice for primary school students through educational gameplay. Inside the game, students play as the caped superhero, Superspeller, who fights against misspelling villain Scrambler by correctly identifying and spelling scrambled words.
Several game modes provide effective utility for an enterprising student – endless and set-length batches of questions – while unique question lists adapted from the Australian Curriculum enable the ILO’s use by multiple age groups. Each spelling session also helps users identify spelling weaknesses, with incorrect responses and the associated correct response reported at the end.
To fully engage users, adaptive mini-endings based on the user’s score reward improvements in ability. Stylised cartoon-like graphics, appropriate for the target audience age, have also been used to enhance the game’s user engagement.
Third Place
A walk in the park
Stuart Vass
Independent Entry
A game where you wander an island, looking adventure, running with the wind, playing with the trees.
The landscape and all graphics generate on the fly. From the movement of your character to the way the trees sway in the wind, is simulated behaviour using scientific understanding of interactions. Mathematical equations are used to create stacked 2D images (“sprite stacking”) that appear to look and behave like moving 3-Dimensions.
This comprehensive yet simple program could be further extended and applied to an RPG/top-down game. This creates a unique style that isn’t used in many games, and because it’s pseudo 3D, the rest of the game can be coded as if it was a regular 2D RPG.
