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SAEON recognises outstanding achievements by young scientists
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Sibongile Mokoena, Education Outreach Coordinator, SAEON
The annual Eskom Expo for Young Scientists was held in Pretoria in October. The young scientists are learners from Grade 5 to 12, who converge on Pretoria from all over the country.
For several months prior to the Expo these enthusiastic young scientists had been hard at work, refining and improving their research projects as they progressed through the elimination stages of the competition. The national finals are the ultimate highlight and SAEON was there.
SAEON participates, with other organisations, in the Special Awards section. Judging for the SAEON Special Award takes many hours of hard work, viewing projects and interviewing learners. The SAEON Special Award for Environmental Monitoring recognises outstanding young scientists whose research projects reflect an aspect of observation, data collection, analysis and come to a decisive conclusion.
SAEON’s Special Awards for 2009 went to the following learners:
In Grades 5, 6 & 7 Andrew Kiggell and Dylan Murray of Blairgowrie Primary School in Johannesburg won a SAEON Special Award for their project entitled Sewerage Sorters (Wetlands). The project also won a bronze in the overall judging in the national finals.
The Grade 8 & 9 winning project was called Onbewus van onse eie fungi skatekis! /Unaware of our own fungi treasure trove! by Nicholas Popich from Waterkloof High School in Pretoria. Nicholas collected photographs of mushrooms and other fungi from different parts of the country and designed a colourful, informative field guide for the Moreleta Kloof Nature Reserve and surrounding area. Through case studies Nicholas hopes to introduce people to the interesting and wonderful world of fungi and the importance of fungi in the ecosystem. Nicholas has won the SAEON Special Award for three years and has won a gold medal in the national finals every year since 2006
In Grades 10, 11 & 12 the SAEON Special Award went to Daneel du Preez from Ferdinand Postma High School in Potchefstroom for his project entitled Can tadpoles be used as environmental indicator? Daneel has conducted an investigation to determine whether mine effluent has adverse effects on tadpole development and survival. He used tanks and soil sediment from two polluted streams and one control tank. He introduced tadpoles to all three tanks and monitored their development and survival. In his experiment he observed that tadpoles developed very slowly in tanks with sediment from polluted streams and their survival was very poor. He concluded that tadpoles are sensitive to environmental pollution and could act as environmental indicators in an ecosystem. The absence of tadpoles in a water body could serve as an early warning system to indicate polluted water.
SAEON would like to congratulate all our winners on their outstanding projects.
SAEON Envirokid wins gold
SAEON is also immensely proud of Pharidah Machaka from Phalaborwa, one of SAEON’s Envirokids who participated in this year’s Science Camp presented by the SAEON Ndlovu Node. Pharidah won a gold medal at the Eskom Expo for an outstanding project in the Medical Sciences and will be representing South Africa at the international Expo for Young Scientist in Reunion next year.
The Eskom Expo is growing bigger each year and the standard of the learners’ research projects is becoming increasingly high. The Environmental Education and Ecology Category – which includes Marine Ecology - is one of the largest sections of the Expo, with 60 projects out of a total of 553.
Minister Naledi Pandor of the Department of Science and Technology delivered the keynote address at the national finals. She emphasised the leading role that South Africa is playing in science and technology on the continent and internationally. The Minister mentioned the recent launch of the SumbandilaSat, which indicates South Africa’s advancement in space and other fields of science. She encouraged learners to pursue careers in science because South Africa depends on them to lead the country in the field of science and technology.
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