Scifest firing up pupils

Discovering the seemingly distant world of science and technology is being brought a lot closer to home for thousands of pupils through the 23rd SA National Science Festival that started in Makhanda on Wednesday.

The theme for the 2019 “Scifest Africa” – as it is affectionately known – is Discover Your Element, which celebrates the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements, as proclaimed by the United Nations.

Scifest Africa provides a platform for leading scientists, both locally and globally, to engage with the youth and inspire them to embark on careers in science and become leaders in the field.

The festival identifies and designs unique interactive events and educational resources with scientific integrity to advance science, facilitate learning in an informal and non-threatening way, and provide pupils with an opportunity to discover science outside the classroom.

The 2019 festival is curated by Dr Stephen Ashworth, from the University of East Anglia (UK), who also delivered the Brian Wilmot Lecture at the official opening on Wednesday.

The week-long festival has continued to grow since being established in 1996, with the 2018 festival attracting more than 62,000 visitors and offering a programme consisting of 64 exhibitions and 701 events, presented by 291 contributors from 77 organisations in SA and the international sector.

The 2019 festival hopes to improve the statistics by providing 35 different workshops, 11 of which occur daily, numerous exhibitions and hundreds of events.

The #Scifest2019 programme allows pupils of national primary and high schools the opportunity to witness first-hand some of the developments that are taking place in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem).

In his official festival message, department of science and technology director-general Dr Phil Mjwara said the government’s partnership with Scifest Africa was also informed by the national imperative of having to significantly increase the number of young black people, and women, in the areas of Stem.

Mjwara said Scifest 2019 provided a platform for the government to raise awareness about the fourth Industrial Revolution, the work that the department did in this space and what SA needed to do to prepare for the challenges and opportunities it brought.

Event marketing manager Hayley Axford said many of the guest speakers were women, which paid tribute to the wellearned recognition and respect women in science had received thus far.

Notable speakers include theoretical physicist and Mars One astronaut candidate Dr Adriana Marais, Dr Daniel Cunnama, of the SA Astronomical Observatory, Dr Lotte Lens, of the Institute for Heavy Ion Research, and Dr Robert Scerri, of the University of California.

The youngest speaker on the lecture programme is Lunga Nkosi, the Eskom Expo for Young Scientists winner of the science communication prize.

Nkosi, a grade 10 pupil, developed the sustainable solar shark barrier (SSSB) – a device meant to reduce the number of human-shark encounters without disturbing the marine life or the leisurely pleasures of beach-goers.

The festival theme also celebrates several anniversaries in the history of chemistry, including the 150th anniversary of the periodic table’s creation by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, 350 years since the discovery of phosphorous, and the categorisation of 33 elements in 1789 by Antoine Lavoiser and Johann Döbereiner’s law of triads in 1829.