Making Musical Waves Competition: Terms and Conditions

Eligibility and registration
  1. This competition is open to persons in full-time secondary education in the United Kingdom up to Y11 (England and Wales)/S5 (Scotland)/Y12 (Northern Ireland).  Entrants must be 16 or under.
  2. Entrants must be part of a team of no more than 4 people.
  3. Teams may submit one entry only.
  4. Entrants may be part of only one team.
  5. Family members of the Mathematics of Waves and Materials group are not eligible to take part in the competition.
  6. Team registration and submission of entries must be by a teacher or adult stem club leader.
  7. Teachers should register interest by providing an official school email address (on the competition web site), by doing so you agree to receive email notifications and reminders about the competition.
  8. Entries are submitted by the teams' teacher, accompanied by the competition cover page giving school name and address, team name, year group(s), and teacher’s email address.
  9. Teachers must obtain consent from the parent or guardian of the pupil taking part, and must confirm this on the entry submission.
  10. We may contact teachers by email in regard to the competition.
  11. Team names must not contain pupils' names.  We reserve the right to disqualify any team with names we deem to be offensive or inappropriate.
  12. Names of pupils taking part in the competition will not be stored.
  13. Prize winners agree to their team name and school name being used in publicity associated with the competition, including publication on the competition website and in University of Manchester promotional material. Team member's names and images will only be published with the permission of the team member and the consent of a parent or carer.
Competition dates
  1. The competition is open for entries from 01 November 2021 to 15 December 2021.  Exact dates will be confirmed nearer the time, but we recommend that teachers register interest in advance on the competition web site.
  2. Resources for supporting activities that may be carried out in preparation are available from the competition web site.
  3. Winning teams will be contacted via their teacher in January 2021.
The competition
  1. The competition challenge is for the team to design and create a musical instrument that must
    1. Be acoustic
    2. Be able to produce notes in a (diatonic) scale of at least one octave
    3. Be made mostly from repurposed or recycled materials
  2. Entries will consist of an MP4 video recording of the instrument(s) being played by team members, and a poster submission showing the design of the instrument and illustrating the science behind it.
  3. Recordings must include one diatonic octave scale, followed by a short piece of music.
  4. The performance must only include team members, but does not have to include all members.
  5. The maximum length of a recording is 1 minute.  File size must be below 15 MB.  If it is not possible to provide a video compressed to this size, an MP3 audio recording may be substituted.
  6. Entries shall consist of one poster and one recording per team.
  7. Posters must be one side of A4 or A3 only.
  8. Work must be original and created by the student(s) – please do not use any templates.
  9. Posters may be designed on computer and submitted as a pdf file, or hand drawn and a good quality photograph submitted as a jpg or png file.
  10. Entries will be submitted by teacher or adult STEM club leader by email, together with a completed Competition Entry Cover Page.
  11. We reserve the right to disqualify any team submitting an entry we deem to include offensive or inappropriate content
 
Prizes
  1. Prizes shall be awarded to teams for
    1. Best designed instrument(s): We are looking for creativity, innovative use of materials and a poster that clearly shows the science underpinning the design
    2. Best poster
    3. Best performance
  2. The teachers of winning teams shall be contacted by email.
  3. Each member of the winning team in each category shall receive:
    1. First place: £30 in gift vouchers
    2. Second place: £25 in gift vouchers
  4. Prizes will be sent out to the winning team’s teacher after the winners are announced.
  5. Prize winners agree to their team name and school name being used in publicity associated with the competition, including publication on the competition website and in University of Manchester promotional material.
  6. The competition organisers reserve the right to change any aspect of the competition at short notice. Such changes will be announced on the competition website as soon as is practical.
  7. The awarding of prizes is at the sole discretion of the competition organisers and no correspondence will be entered into.