Science with a spin - FameLab Academy 2023

What do ballet shoes, nerf guns, dones and a tongue have in common? Well, they all had a starring role at the FameLab Academy science speaking competition held at Curtin University on 6 September.

Audience members enjoyed hearing talented Year 9 students from across Western Australia compete in the event. The FameLab competition sees 14 to 15 year olds encouraged to hone their communication skills by giving a three minute talk about a topic of interest in the area of science. The topics are chosen by students and their presentations are judged by three professionals skilled in the area of science communication on the Content, Clarity and Charisma of their presentations (known as FameLab's three C’s).

At the 2023 awards, presentations from the 12 finalists included:

• It's not your fault you hate vegetables (featuring oversized model of a tongue)
• What is the band wagon effect? (aka why are Oliver Green waterbottles so popular)
• AI and robots in modern warfare (with drone to demonstrate)
• Space, time and spaghetti (about black holes)
• Projectile motion (hence the nerf gun)

It was particularly pleasing to see Cunderdin District High School make it through to the finals; congratulations Charli Hansen for your talk on "The Advances in DNA Interpretation in Forensics throughout the years" together with Anastasia Husk from Fogarty EDvance alumni school Aveley Secondary College. Anastasia educated us about biomechanics with her presentation "Injury-Proof and On Point - a Dance through Science".

The Foundation wishes to thank the science teachers, parents, guardians and others who supported competition participants through the year. We congratulate all 12 schools and students who made it into the final and encourage all schools that participated this year to do so again in 2024.