Eloise Nefdt

Manenberg High School students arrived on Monday, the first intake in a new programme, according to Eloise Nefdt, seen here, an educator here at the science centre.

Normally Eloise travels the highways and byways of the Cape with colleague Detlef Basel in the ''mellow yellow'' mobile laboratory. But as many students are currently in the countdown for final exams (39 days and dropping ....) selected groups are coming here.

The programme hopes to target the Dinaledi (''Morning Star'') high schools which produce better-than-average science results. The Department of Science and Technology has kindly sponsored this. Most of all, it gives us a good excuse to give Eloise her first airing on the blog!

Brimming with boffins

Now this is more like it! The People's Post, a widely-read community weekly newspaper published by NasPers, has an article on the recent Eskom Expo for Young Scientists, which was held at the MTN Sciencentre.

The headline: 'Suburbs brimming with boffins'. It mentions, among others, Naadirah Mukadam and Sameera Mohamed of Pinelands High, some of the 20-or-so winners who are going on to the nationals in Pretoria in September.

Stephanus Spammer of Wynberg Boys High and Westerford's Alex Erlank and Shaun Irwin are also mentioned. As is the MTN Sciencentre.

Brimming with boffins ... we like it.

I See Science

How does a kid take a photograph when he (or she) has never held a camera before and doesn't even know which button to press - or that the buttons are there to be pressed?

And then how do you persuade the youngster to take a photograph of science?

Ask Detlef Basel, the 72-year-old stalwart of the MTN Sciencentre. By Thursday, this avid photographer will have introduced 200 children from Khayelitsha, Langa and Delft to the wonders of digital photography - with a quick sidetrip to Paarl on Wednesday to cause a few chemical reactions with colleague Eloise Nefdt.

Young Scientists on SAfm

Akhona Mbele and Busisile Zilwa (see photo) both grade 11 students from the Cape
Academy of Mathematics, Science and Technology, are appearing on Morning Talkback with Ashraf Garda on SAfm radio on Monday, August 20. They will share the airwaves with Ivan James, an Expo vice-chairperson in the Cape.

The two students were among the hundreds of competitors who flooded into the MTN Sciencentre last week for the Eskom Expo For Young Scientists.

It was the first time that the MTN Sciencentre hosted the Expo, which has been running for a quarter of a century in South Africa.

Akhona and Busisile were happy with their bronze medals after competing for the first time.

Busisile, who lives in Khayelitsha outside of school term, when he stays in the Academy's boarding house, said the project focused on how to help the municipality supply clean water, as cheaply as possible, to densely-populated and impoverished townships.

Akhona, who hails from Beaufort West in the central Karoo, where he lives with his pensioner mother and granny, said they utilised river water, bore holes and underground aquifers, and concentrated on ways to clean the water up to human standards.

Charl Schoeman, their biology teacher, said it was the four-year-old school's first time at the Expo. Schoeman was delighted that three of his four teams received bronze medals.

Jani de Bruin of the MTN Sciencentre, which hosted the Cape Town leg of the Expo for the first time, paid tribute to Engen for allowing visitors free access during the two days of the competition, and said she looked forward to a repeat performance next year.

Cape Town Expo organiser Olga Peel from the Bishops (Diocesan College) biology department in Rondebosch said 435 projects by nearly 650 pupils across the Cape peninsula competed for silver, bronze and gold medals.

In the past week, in addition to the Cape Town competition, thousands of students participated in the Bloemfontein, Ladysmith, Nelspruit, Bethlehem, Welkom, Secunda and Port Elizabeth competitions.

And this week there will be Expo for Young Scientist competitions in Ixopo in KwaZulu Natal on Tuesday (August 21), in Kimberley on Wednesday, in Upington in the Northern Cape on Thursday and in Stellenbosch in the Western Cape on Thursday and Friday.

More Expos follow in Mmabatho in the Northwest, the University of the North-West in Phalaborwa, in Tzaneen and in Polokwane.

Whale watching

A full bus load of 60 people went with Busi Maqubela, Maryka Pace and Jani de Bruin from MTN Sciencentre on Saturday, August 18.

Their destination: the pretty coastal town of Hermanus. First stop: the Whale Show, with sculptor/painter and environmentalist Noel Ashton.

Pre-schoolers Lusanda Khalala from Gugulethu, Thando Dube from Langa and Nelisiwe Dunge from Bellville were among the very youngest of the visitors who were impressed by Noel's impassioned call for people to halt whaling.

Noel also lined up a special guest visitor: Zolani Baleni, the whale crier, who 'called' the whales by blowing on his horn made from dried kelp.

Next stop: the look-out point over the Old Harbour. After that, the group split up with their picnic baskets and checked out a spectacular site: three southern right whales breaching simultaneously. Breaching is when the whales leap out of the water - no mean feat when you weigh 45 tons!