5th Science Centre World Congress

Registration is now open for the 5th Science Centre World Congress, taking place June 15-20, 2008 in Canada - and the MTN Sciencentre intends to be there, in both Toronto and further north in Sudbury, in the province of Ontario.

Speakers include Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit leader, a Canadian climate change activist and a nominee for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Another speaker is Dr. Mohamed Hassan, former dean of the school of mathematical sciences at the University of Khartoum in the Sudan. Dr. Hassan is president of the African Academy of Sciences, headquartered in Kenya, and executive director of the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World, based in Italy.

Both Sheila Watt-Cloutier and Mohamed Hassan will adress the Congress on the topic of Mother Earth - Living on it, Changing it, Sustaining it. Visit the website www.5scwc.org for details.

MTE studio's water exhibit

Kids are splashing about with the water exhibit newly designed by the smart people at MTE Studio. Expect a story about it in the Escape section of the Cape Times any day now.

Super Silly Science Sleepover

Yes indeed, it's time for the Silly Science Sleepover at the MTN Sciencentre. For ages 8 to 12. Who could resist ... and it's just before it's time to go back to school! Tel 021 5298100 to book. A maximum of 120 kids can participate. Dress up like a mad scientist, explode the myths about popcorn, paint up a storm on a t-shirt, go star-gazing on the rooftop or just sit back, relax, and enjoy the super silly science show. Overnight Friday January 11.

Tik Tok, Time Runs Out

Our new exhibition is called Tik, Tok, Time is Running Out.

It's an interactive awareness exhibition on tik, the highly addictive drug (seen above at molecular level) that ruins so many young South African lives. Kindly sponsored by the Western Cape Education Department.

ikapa elihlumayo!

Schools are already lining up for 2008 and visits to the MTN Sciencentre.

So we say goodbye to 2007 with a brief mention of some of the last of our formal visitors to the MTN Sciencentre, including the El-Shadai Christian School in Durbanville and Excelsior Secondary School in Belhar. Good luck to the matrics, who get their results on Friday.

In addition, some of the teachers taking advantage of the last few days of the school calendar included the bilingual Gordon’s Bay Primary / Primêre Skool Gordonsbaai further east along our coast in some spectacularly pretty landscape, as seen above.

And one of our last but not least: students from Strandfontien Primary in Mitchell's Plain

Keeping an eye on Mother Earth

Students from Fairmont high school in Durbanville, which is on a former farm with roots traceable back to the days of the Dutch East India Company, dropped in on the MTN Sciencentre in the not too distant past.

They were joined by students from Lotus River on the Cape Flats, St George's Grammar in Mowbray, a school which is about to celebrate its 160th birthday in 2008, and Klein Nederburg High (where rugby player and coach Chester Williams studied) dropped in to the MTN Sciencentre to brush up on their science skills in late November.

Why? They were going to join some very high-powered people at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, which was hosting the Ministerial Summit on Earth Observations.

Ministers and officials from over 100 governments and international organizations assembled in Cape Town, South Africa from 28 to 30 November 2007 to agree on a plan for building a Global Earth Observation System of Systems, or GEOSS, to monitor the health of our one and only planet.

Who knows - with the help of the MTN Sciencentre, maybe some of the students who came to us before heading off to the Ministerial Summit will one day be the science equivalent of Chester Williams!

Homestead Projects for Street Children

Street children for The Homestead Project (above) in Strand Street were among our last official visitors, with Gerald Jacobs. 1982 - The Homestead was the first shelter for street children in Cape Town and indeed in South Africa. It opened in 1982.

At the same time - this was back in November, on the 26th - Eloise Nefdt and Detlef Basel took the mobile sciencentre to the Western Cape Education Department.

The next day, it was a visit from the students from the Al Azhar Institute, a madressa in Lappert Street in Paarl, 60 kilometres away, and the kids from the Nural Huda Nursery School, one of the Montessori schools, with teacher Fatima Rahbeeni.

The kids from Nural Huda didn't have to travel so far, coming from 62 Ernest Road in Rylands Estate in Athlone on the Cape Flats.

Now, of course, it's holiday-mode, with kids coming in from the beach ready to have fun.