Once again the thinking caps were on at this year's Western Education and Library Board's (WELB) Science and Technology Challenge, organised in partnership with Sentinus, as hundreds of school children designed and constructed a marble run in order to become the 'Champion of the Science and Technology arena 2008'.

Over 60 schools from across the WELB area took part in this year's challenge with 18 primary schools selected to progress to the WELB final to take place in the Technology Education Centre, Omagh later this month.

In teams of three, each school were given a task to complete within 1 hour with a limited amount of raw materials. This year's task was 'to design and construct a slow marble run', allowing a marble to travel at a slow speed for as long a time as possible depositing into a container '.

Oonagh McNelis, AAO for the World Around Us with the WELB, said: "Once again the children have shown tremendous creative and analytical abilities in building their models. It is notable that despite being given exactly the same materials the range of workable ideas is awe-inspiring. The children produced some really creative solutions to the problem and must be commended in all they have achieved."