To the victor go the spoils. Shap Pat Heung Rural Committee Kung Yik She Secondary School was catapulted to victory when the school's teams swept aside all comers in an innovative engineering competition last weekend.
More than 1,400 secondary students from 150 secondary schools took part in the Inter-school Straw Trebuchet Design and Construction Competition at City University on Sunday, pitting their minds against each other armed with just 150 ordinary plastic straws and 80 metres of cotton thread.
The 400 teams of three or four students had just 90 minutes to use these to construct a trebuchet capable of launching a shuttlecock.
A trebuchet was a siege engine popular in Europe during the Middle Ages when it hurled rocks and other projectiles over battlements. However, the students were asked only to launch a shuttlecock across the sports hall.
'I feel really happy, and it's a great sense of accomplishment,' said Form Four student Chan So-sum, whose team won the senior category, for forms four to seven.
So-sum and her two team mates' device launched their shuttlecock 15.3 metres only to be pipped at the post by their junior schoolmates, who broke the 16-metre mark.