Recently the Minister for Grand Bahama, Dr. Michael Darville, officially opened the 18th annual SECME Mousetrap and Bottle Rocket Competition by firing the first bottle rocket to start the festivities. Soon thereafter, students from throughout Grand Bahama competed to see which budding engineers had built and designed the best mousetrap car or bottle rocket.

The competition was held at the Jack Hayward High School gymnasium, with Grand Bahama Shipyard (GBS) once again being the major sponsor of the competition along with annual organisers Bahamas Society of Engineers, the Ministry of Education and the Rotary Club of Lucaya. .

Schools participating in the competition included St. Paul Methodist College, Jack Hayward High School, St. Georges High School, Tabernacle Baptist Academy, Eight Mile Rock High School, The Beacon School, Mary Star Academy, Bartlett Hill Primary School, Walter Parker Primary School, Freeport Primary School, West End Primary School and Sister Mary Patricia Russell School.

“I felt like this year’s SECME competition was a huge success,” said Barry Dickson, Contracts Manager at GBS. “It was great to see the young men and women from primary, junior, and senior levels of school collaborate in 3 person teams.”

Each team designs, draws, builds, and operates cars and rockets to compete with the other schools, using a simple mousetrap for the cars and two-litre soda bottles for the rockets.

Students also are required to design and draw a theme patch, which was displayed on posters at the competition, which was judged by the Bahamas Society of Engineers.

For the mousetrap part of the competition, the primary school winners were Bishop Michael Eldon School (BMES), St. Paul’s Methodist College second place, and Freeport Primary School in third place. The junior high school winners were BMES, St. Paul’s and Mary Star in second and third place respectively. The senior high school winners were once again BMES, St. Paul’s and Mary Star. As BMES swept the mousetrap division of the competition, they made history, as the first school in The Bahamas to do so.

The Junior and Senior teams will represent the country in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, June 24th – 27th, 2015 with all of the trip expenses paid by the Rotary Club of Lucaya and the Bahamas Society of Engineers. Last year, BMES’ Junior Team placed 2nd in the International Competition held in Birmingham, Alabama, defeating several school district representatives in the US. In 2013, the Senior School Team of BMES placed 3rd in the International Competition held at Daytona Beach, Florida.

“The competition showcased BMES students’ engineering skills as they presented their latest alternate design of mousetrap car,” said Nonito Viajar, BMES Physics Teacher. “They were the only team in the district competition who were able to design, to construct and to run an alternate Upside-down mousetrap car which ran faster than the traditional cars.”

For the bottle rocket competition, the primary school winners were St. Paul’s, with Bartlett Hill Primary coming in second and Freeport Primary third. The junior high school winners were Mary Star, with BMES taking second honours and St. Paul’s third place. The senior high school winners were Eight Mile Rock High School, Mary Star in second and BMES in third.

This competition is a major event for Grand Bahama students entering the science, technology, engineering and math fields, and the organisers are incredibly proud to support this avenue for engineering expression.

“Grand Bahama Shipyard is a proud sponsor of this event because it helps develop the youth of the country into future engineers and scientists,” said Dickson. “Here at GBS, we also feel like this is another important way to give back to the community, so we look forward to supporting this competition each year.”

About GB Shipyard

Located on Grand Bahama Island in the Freeport Maritime Centre, 73 miles east of Florida, Grand Bahama Shipyard is one of the biggest ship repair companies in the region. With 3 floating docks that feature all the capabilities and resources for dry-docking, repairs, upgrades and conversions of ships, as well as the ability to fabricate marine structures. GB Shipyard is now also ready to take on fabrication projects, especially for offshore industry. Learn more at www.gbshipyard.com