On Sunday 4 February, two teams from Habs Girls and Habs Boys competed in a National Safe Cracking competition.
Hosted by Dulwich College, the event was organised and led by passionate academics from the worlds of Physics and Engineering, with added support from the Weizmann Institute.
Both teams from Year 12 worked tremendously hard leading up to the competition, so it was unsurprising they performed so well on the day.
Hard work pays off
There were 31 teams from a total of 17 different schools competing, with the Habs team, Fission Chips, securing second place.
Fission Chips comprised Oscar (L6R1), Ray (L6M1), Ibrahim (L6S2), Bibi (L6JJM) and Amber (L6JJM). Our other team, We Need a Vacuum, consisted of Alex G (L6C1), Alex R (L6C1), Neeam (L6S2), Evan (L6M2) and Felix (L6R2).
Accompanied by Mrs Selouk and Miss Hooker, the contest was the culmination of months of hard work from the students. Each team needed to construct their own safe using two physics-based puzzles of their own design to secure it.
The teams then attempted to crack their competitors’ safes, all while defending their own. A further challenge was explaining the physics at play to the judging panel.
A cracking day all-round
We Need a Vacuum ran into early technical difficulties, yet managed to fix them on the spot, giving them a well-functioning safe for the day. This ensured a high points score for the team in both the Judges and Peer Review categories. The boys also did well in cracking the other teams’ safes, leading to a very respectable 10th place finish.
Overall, it was an enjoyable day of science and engineering. Both teams would like to thank Miss Mrs Selouk, Miss Hooker and Mr Roncarati for their help in building the safes and their support on the day of the contest.
