A range of international scientists are preparing to come to South Africa for this year’s national festival of science, engineering and technology, which takes place from March 16 to 22 in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape.
The Sasol Scifest is not only considered the biggest science festival on the African continent, and a key trigger behind many high-school students’ decision to register for university science degrees, but it is also developing an international imprint that opens up dialogue between local and developed-world scientists.
To mark the fact that 2005 is the World Year of Physics, the Scifest is bringing out a prominent African-American astronomer, Prof Gibor Basri, a world expert on failed stars, also known as brown dwarfs.
Basri will be discussing humanity’s search for other worlds, particularly those that might resemble Earth. Basri is taking part in a Nasa mission that may be able to answer this question within a few years. He will also be debating the next steps in our quest to learn whether we are alone in the galaxy.
Basri is from the University of California. His trip coincides with South Africa’s push to host the massive $1-billion (R6,14-billion) square kilometre array radio-telescope project, using the country’s strategic location in the southern hemisphere, clear weather and lack of light pollution.
‘Killers in the brain’
A British scientist, Prof Nancy Rothwell of Manchester University, will speak on the topic of ”tracking down killers in the brain”. Rothwell heads a research group investigating how the brain communicates with the immune system and responds to illness and injury.
”Our brains are the most complicated structures on the planet, with billions of cells and hundreds of billions of kilometres of connections,” Rothwell says. ”When something goes wrong in just a tiny part of the brain, the effects can be devastating.”
She will be discussing her research in identifying killer molecules produced by injured cells and finding ways to halt their havoc.
There will also be a video-conference link-up with the Wrexham Science Festival in the United Kingdom and Grahamstown’s St Andrew’s College, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2005.
Radio kits, sponsored by the Welsh Development Agency, will be assembled simultaneously by groups of schoolchildren on both continents, and hopefully they will be able to communicate with each other by the end of the workshop.
Confirmed guests include for the first time experts from the snowy north, in this case Canada and Finland. Environmental specialist Cleone Todgham will be giving two talks about issues facing Jasper National Park in the famous Rocky Mountains of Canada, as well as four workshops at the Albany Science museum in which, among other things, she teaches participants to howl like wolves.
Computer scientist Erkki Sutinen from the University of Joensuu in Finland will be giving three talks, entitled Opened up by Technology, on how to create meaningful knowledge rather than just downloading irrelevant bits of information.
Sutinen’s university will also be running an exhibition in the 1820 Settlers National Monument for the duration of the Scifest on how Finland’s network of Kids’ Clubs forms successful technology-rich collaborations in which young people do more than just learn about the latest gadgetry, but also discover meaningful and personal ways to apply it.
The Kids’ Club, with Marjo Vines, will also be running three workshops for children from the age of 10 and up (and for adults) on how to build and easily programme a robot using Lego’s Mindstorms kits, on March 17, 19 and 21.
Other international visitors include two from Wales — Wendy Sadler, a tenor saxophonist and a science communicator, will be discussing the physics of music, while physicist Zbig Sobiesierski will be revealing the latest in nanotechnology, the science of working with tools a thousand times smaller than a cross-section of human hair.
Blowing up rockets
From across the channel come two regular visitors, Frenchmen Christophe Scicluna and Arnaud Leroy, who will blow up rockets and present a new series on communication from semaphore to satellite.
They will also be resurrecting the old semaphore in the grounds of Fort Selwyn in a daily demonstration to honour the Chappe brothers, who caused a sensation with the first commercial semaphore system near Paris.
”Soon, there were semaphore signalling systems covering the main cities of France,” Scicluna recounts. ”Semaphore signalling spread to Italy, Germany and Russia — and all the way to the tip of Africa to good old Grahamstown!”
But it wasn’t all plain sailing: ”Semaphores weren’t very successful in England because of the fog and smog caused by the Industrial Revolution — and in Grahamstown because of the heat haze.”
Scicluna and Leroy will also run daily afternoon workshops on how to build micro-rockets of cardboard, propelled by a safe powder engine, which can reach a height of 100m.
The Scifest is always held in the first term of the school year so that it can attract as many school visits as possible, some of which come from far across the country, and many teachers credit the Scifest in feedback sessions with improving their ability to teach science subjects.
The full programme of more than 500 Sasol Scifest events is available by e-mailing [email protected], or see the programme on the internet at www.scifest.org.za