Headmaster's Weekly Newsletter -- Week 22

I have never started a newsletter by quoting Einstein but here goes: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination circles the world.”

 

If we are to harness the incredible energy of the tides of the Bay of Fundy, we will need creativity and science to find a solution. (So far every attempt has failed, sometimes in spectacular fashion!)  If we are to find a way of mopping up oil spills, or ridding our oceans of plastic, or reducing carbon emissions, we will need the imaginative powers of present day and future engineers.

 

The creative and scientific brains of our Junior and Senior School students were on full display this week as the annual Junior School Science Fair and the Grade 10 mousetrap car challenge took place.  No two projects or cars were the same. Science teachers Ms. Hannah Sinclair and Mr. Sandy Forsyth create the same mouse trap guidelines and then their students’ imaginations run wild. Some mousetrap cars had two axles and four wheels, others one axle and two wheels. All of them were creative efforts to maximize the potential energy stored in the mousetrap spring, minimize rolling friction, overcome inertia, and create momentum using different combinations of lever arms and wheels.

 

The Junior School Science Fair is always awesome.  Mrs. Belliveau and Mr. Kershaw do an incredible job stewarding the projects, and the Grade 11 judges are always excited and enthusiastic about their responsibility.   One student judge, Justin Day, was describing to me how impressed he was and went on to say that Fox Sullivan’s (Grade 9) project on genetics covered topics that they were just beginning to study in IB Biology!

 

Everyone has their favourites, and the Grade 11 judges have energetic debates amongst themselves about whose are the best.  I remember my children’s Science Fair projects, and I know how much goes into each display board and how much they mean to the individual students. The projects become extensions of each students’ interests and imaginations. From colonizing Mars, to imagining the earth without people, to testing the reliability of eyewitnesses over time, the projects are as diverse as our student body.  As one passes through the different displays one cannot help but feel that it is this kind of exercise which will give us solutions for current challenges and hope for the future.