About Scitech
Scitech is a not-for-profit organisation proudly supported by the Western Australian Government through the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation
Tinkering is all about hands-on experiences – experimenting with materials and discovering how they can be combined in interesting and creative ways. It’s an opportunity to spend time exploring and being innovative.
Tinker and Create is a series of challenge activities for you to do at home. Try them and see what you can invent!
Follow the Think > Build > Test design process to help guide you.
- Think
These challenges are all about exploring how things work. Although you’ll probably design a very cool end product, the most important part is the process you go through to get there. - Build
Now it time to get hands-on with tinkering! Putting your plans into action is a great way of flexing your problem-solving skills by testing what works and what doesn’t. - Test, test, test!
Planning and constructing is important but make sure you test and adjust your design as you go. You might have heard the phrase ‘fail fast’, and that’s what testing helps you do. Failing is a great opportunity to learn, and an important part of tinkering.
As the great Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Getting started
Choose a Tinker & Create challenge and watch the first video in its series. Have a think about the questions the presenter asks and start brainstorming your ideas.
Then watch the second video for instructions on how to go about the challenge. Remember, this is an open-ended challenge so you don’t have to follow the presenter’s examples – feel free to come up with your own way.
And the third video will show you some examples of ways to complete the challenge. How is your different, or better?
Send us a photo or video so we can see your creations, by tagging #ScitechAtHome.
