Questacon captures the spirit of innovation

15 August 2007

The Prime Minister, the Hon John Howard MP today launched Questacon Imagination Factory – Invent and Play. This new exhibition enables visitors to discover their own hidden ingenuity by investigating the creativity behind basic mechanical tools such as gears, levers, cams and pulleys.

The Questacon Imagination Factory is the result of a successful partnership between Questacon and Raytheon, demonstrating both organisations commitment to science and technology promotion and education.

This million dollar partnership was made possible by a 15 year old Canberra Girls Grammar student, Shanee Conran. While on work experience with Raytheon Australia, Shanee wrote a paper that was presented to senior Raytheon company leaders in the United States explaining why Questacon plays an important role in attracting Australian students to science and technology. It was as a result of Shanee’s paper that Raytheon decided to work with Questacon to build this exciting new exhibition.

The exhibition has strong links to national and state curricula and aims to teach children how simple tools can be used to create inventive machinery. Imagination Factory encourages students to explore seemingly simple machines to discover how, with a little innovation and creativity, they can be used to make ingenious inventions.

At the heart of the exhibit is the Energy Machine, a culmination of all the innovative technology on display in the exhibition. The seemingly simplistic can often create the most powerful inventions!

Questacon’s Director, Professor Graham Durant said “I would like to encourage everyone to visit the Questacon Imagination Factory where they can discover the building blocks of our most important modern technology.”