Sam Hillcoat, Harry Swan and Nicole Patrick have won the top three prizes in the Tasmanian Science Talent Search open engineering challenge with three projects designed and built by the students.

The three projects were of such high standard that the students have been invited to the national BHP Foundation Science and Engineering Awards.

Grammar science teacher Greg Titmuss said it was a wonderful achievement to have the school represented in the top three places in the national award.

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However, what was even more exceptional was that each of the students designed, tested and worked through prototypes of their inventions in their own time.

As part of the national competition, the students submit a video to present their pitch for their invention to industry experts and the judging panel.

All three students will present their inventions to industry experts at the national competition in November.

The three students shared their projects and how they could work in a real-world application.

Sam Hillcoat and Harry Swan, who are both in year 12, came together as a team to develop a prototype for the 'titration station'.

Titration is a common laboratory technique that is used to measure the concentration of elements within a liquid and uses a titrate agent to react with the solution to determine the concentration.

However, the technique is commonly done with large amounts of equipment and expensive glassware, which makes it unwieldy to use in day-to-day applications.

Harry Swan said during their science studies, the pair often had to use titration techniques but they wanted to find a way to make it more affordable and accessible - and the titration station was born.

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The station uses a laser-cut chamber for the liquid to flow through and react with the solution to give an accurate concentration reading.

The entire process is controlled via a mobile or desktop app the pair have designed themselves.

Mr Swan said they have been working on the invention for much of the year and worked through many challenges to come up with the current prototype.

"We have done testing [in science] in microfluidics but we wanted to find a way to make it cheaper and easier," he said.

Mr Hillcoat said applications in the real world could include the education space, but also in the health/medical space as it could be adapted to measure the concentration of glucose or other elements in the blood or bodily fluids.

After learning that 780 million people in the world don't have access to clean water, year 11 student Nicole Patrick knew she had to do something to help.

The filtration tap she has designed will fit onto a 20-litre plastic tank of water and provide clean water to households from any source.

She said she went through about 10-15 prototypes to find the best way to fit the tap together and settled on 3D printing as the best way.

There was only one problem to that - she didn't know how to use a 3D printer.

"I had to teach myself how to 3D print and how to set up a 3D printer correctly," she said.

Miss Patrick tested her tap with water from the Tamar River and received successful results.

She said the only big hurdle she had to overcome was to find out how to make the tap, and also, at first, her bacteria results had not been positive.

"But I found out soon after that my equipment wasn't sterile, so I fixed that straight away," she said.

Sam Hillcoat has another invention in the competition, coming up with a cost-effective Braile board.

The board is connected to a computer and is programmed to translate any written text into Braille.

Mr Hillcoat said he was inspired after meeting a blind student at Grammar and learning about the difficulties he faced with translation.

"Boards like this exist but they are very expensive, often costing more than $10,000, and so many families with blind children can't afford them," he said.

His invention can be hooked up to any computer and translates the braille characters one at a time, however, the prototype is in development to read more characters.

Mr Hillcoat said he wanted to find a cheaper way for blind students to enhance their learning, which was the motivation for his invention.

Most of the existing braille boards are also large and unwieldy so not great for studying.

The braille board creates braille characters on top of the device and translates digital text for students to read.

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