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This Week
MEALS ON WHEELS VETERANS:
PAUL HARRIS AWARDS:
President Bill Goodwin recognised the long time volunteer work of two women in our community, Rosemary Smart and Yoland Sargood, with Meals on Wheels, by presenting them with Paul Harris awards. Rosemary said she looked forward to her visits with elderly, frail and isolated people "when I bring them meals. I may well be the only person with whom they communicate in the whole day”.
UN YOUTH WINNER: MIENCHA BRAHMAN:
Miencha spoke of her experience at the UN Youth Association of Australia Conference in Brisbane, June this year. She thanked RC Balwyn for its part in sponsoring her to attend the conference and thus meet and debate with other young men & women from around Australia. “This is peer to peer education in life skills,'' she said. ''We debated such topics as: Services in rural Australia, Women’s Rights, Climate Change, Bill of Rights for Australia”. She added that “it was a life changing conference”.
SPORTS CARS: SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY STYLE;
As part of their final year in engineering at Swinburne University, team leaders Rob Duffus, Tony Panetta with four others, described their project.
“It was a team effort to design and construct a miniature sports car with electric drive," said Rob. "It demanded every sort of engineering skill," he continued.
"The chassis itself was evaluated and designed using finite element analysis to calculate stresses and strains.
"Then there was the DC electric drive itself embodying state of the art components such as Thundersky lithium-ion batteries and solid state capacitors”.
The driver has a touch screen dashboard to view and control all functions. All components needed to be super-light weight, since the racing car is used for intense performance lasting about five minutes.
The vehicle will be completed next year and raced the following year in the MONTACANA (non academic) contest with timed events. A good number of club members viewed the sports car after the meeting and peppered the enthusiastic builders with questions.
Our thanks to Clarke Ballard who organised this presentation, motivated the students, and sponsored the project!
Owen Tassicker
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