500 students compete in the green transformation challenge

The STEM Day festival was organized by Vietnamese-German University on the morning of January 12 for students of high schools in Binh Duong and Ho Chi Minh City to help young people understand the interaction between energy efficiency, economic benefits, and impact. social and environmental benefits. Students must know how to apply interdisciplinary knowledge to solve challenges designed to illustrate practical problems.

In hydropower challengestudents will transform into energy engineers, building pre-prepared mini hydroelectric models. The groups have two main tasks: to design a circuit to light up 5 light bulbs with a current with a voltage of 6V. Nguyen Duc Lam, a 12th grade student at Marie Curie High School, said that this challenge requires team members to find the appropriate gear ratio to create electric current within the allowable voltage. “The team had to test the turbine rotation speeds many times to get the voltage to meet the requirements,” Lam said.

With floating house challengegroups were provided with a rectangular floor mounted with materials of different weights at each corner. The task is to design and cut materials to balance the floor when placed on water. Because they can only test once on water, teams must carefully calculate the design and arrange materials to help balance the house. “The team had to visualize and plan for even distribution across the entire floor, requiring the application of physical knowledge about acsimometer thrust, gravity… This required using a computer to find suitable parameters. suitable for floating houses to meet balance requirements,” said Huu Thang, a student at Phu Nhuan High School.

In green investment challengewith the problem assuming three models of power plants using small-scale fossil energy, large-scale and large-scale clean energy plants. With an initial amount of capital allocated, groups must calculate based on the costs and annual revenue of each type of power plant. From there, propose a consulting plan on the type and number of construction factories. How do factories achieve the goal of economic development as well as sustainability for 20 years?

According to Ms. Pham Ngoc Tham, Lecturer at the Faculty of Economics and Management, Viet Duc University, the investment cost of a fossil energy plant will be lower than that of renewable energy. But the disadvantage of this factory is that the revenue is not high. On the contrary, with renewable energy plants the initial investment cost is high, but the revenue is higher. Groups must calculate a reasonable initial capital for two types of fossil energy and renewable energy plants. Then, based on the revenue earned, continue to invest in renewable power plants to both protect the environment and develop the economy. “This is a very real investment problem today and we want to guide students to have a well-founded investment mindset, aiming at economic development but ensuring sustainable development requirements,” Ms. Tham said.

The remaining competitions are smart traffic challenges when designing a system to count seconds for lights to change based on traffic flow; challenge city planning design with harmony between urban development and green areas and natural landscapes; The challenge is to apply knowledge of computer science to store data in the least space-consuming way after encryption.

At the end of 6 challenges, based on the total score, a group of students from Phu Nhuan High School (HCMC) won the first prize with a reward of 10 million VND, the second prize of 7.5 million VND went to Di An High School (Binh Duong). , third prize of 5 million VND went to Le Hong Phong High School for the Gifted (HCMC). Two consolation prizes of 2.5 million VND each went to Gia Dinh High School (HCMC) and Viet Anh 3 School (Binh Duong).

Dr. Ha Thuc Vien, Vice Rector of Vietnamese-German University, said that STEM Day helps students apply scientific knowledge but is also associated with social responsibility, especially in the context of the global crisis. environmental and sustainable development challenges. He said that the challenges at the festival were designed by lecturers of Viet Duc University to inspire and arouse creative passion in STEM sciences. “These challenges not only require creativity and logical thinking but also collaboration skills and practical problem-solving ability,” Dr. Vien said.