PAST EDITIONS & RESULTS

The fifth edition of Zim Full STEAM continued The Great Escape theme with two thrilling events. In the online Cryptography Challenge, Escape from Kifungo, students matched wits with the prison warden in a battle of codes and clues, racing to outsmart their captor and break free. The event was won by the HIS trio of Baixiong Dou, Kamal Peter Cartier, and Peize Wu. The second event, The Ravine of No Return, pushed teams to their engineering limits. Having escaped the prison, participants had to drive their model getaway cars across the crumbling Rathuma Bridge, and bring it crashing down before the pursuing guards could cross. Victory in this challenge went to Watershed’s Angeline, Tafadzwa, Maitanyasha, and Tinatseishe.

Our fourth Zim Full STEAM event continued the adventures with a new theme : The Great Escape. In the first event, the Zipline Dropzone Challenge, teams created precise delivery systems capable of sending escape tools down a zipline to aid our trapped hero. Creativity, precision, and problem-solving were on full display. Then in the Grappling Hook Challenge, students engineered and tested their own grappling hooks, racing to snatch five elusive keys that would unlock their freedom. And in both challenges, the unstoppable team of Takeshi Seo, Kamal Peter Cartier, and Peize Wu claimed victory.

Our third event continued the pirates theme with three activities. For our first activity, eight students published dynamic DESMOS animations based on mathematics, with Takeshi Seo winning the event. Students then used map-reading, code-breaking, and shovels to solve the Shona pirate mystery and find the clues and lost treasure. And finally, the teams designed pirate ships using a variety of hulls, keels, hydrofoils, and sails and raced them across the pool using leafblowers. 

This event featured two events related to pirates. In the first, students created and tested Cartesian divers, with the goal of collecting Captain Kidd's treasure from the bottom of the sea. Makanaka Machanzi, Catherine Wang, and Jie Kang Zheng from HIS built the only cartesian diver to successfully salvage the treasure. In the second, the teams built vortex cannons and participated in a tournament to blow down enemy pirate ships with their cannon rings (made visual using theatre fog). Seth Keeley and Catherine Wang built an amazing vortex cannon and defeated three other teams in the Cannon Battle of Mossuril Bay to become champions. 

The inaugural Zim Full STEAM was a full-day event and featured ten events, including Rockets carrying egg pilots, Robotics challenge, STEM Talks, Deciphering of an alien message, Moonquake resistant structures, and a Science Quiz. Eneko Reaves & Sundiata Provençal's rocket made it closest to their destination, the dwarf planet Ceres; their passengers did not, unfortunately, survive landing. Takeshi Seo built the only robot to complete the mission of bringing supplies to the moon base on Titan. And Olin Walther built the best moonbase structure to withstand the most intense moonquakes.