King’s High School year 9 student Samuel Riley, 13, has been working to collect 31 science badges as part of a self-led learning programme by the Science Award Trust.
Students pick a topic that interests them, then work towards their desired badge by completing challenges. Once marked and finished, they receive a badge and a certificate.
When he received his 30th badge, he was eligible for the platinum award — only 40 other New Zealand students have achieved this since 2019.
‘‘There’s a badge for nearly every science topic you can think of,’’ Samuel said.
He said creating a new badge for computer science was ‘‘filling a gap that needed to be filled’’.
‘‘It’s quite funny to think about that other people across the nation could be working towards it.’’
Samuel’s badge features a binary code.
He sent the first draft to the Science Award Trust and, when they liked it, he started working on more copies with the trust’s help until coming to the final design.
His favourite badge to work towards had been the investigation badge, for which he got to choose what to investigate.
‘‘I found that it’s just the normal fold ... make that as small as possible and it flies pretty well.’’
While he would like to get more badges, he had exhausted the accessible ones and was now left with badges that had some very specific requirements.
‘‘Some want me to go get wool samples, or visit a power plant — I didn’t think I could do those in my timeframe that I was doing them in.
‘‘Maybe if I have time in the future I’ll try them.’’
Samuel hopes to land a job within the science sector.
‘‘I’m looking at going into aerospace engineering, or maybe being a pilot.’’
