schoolsthatrockCape Town Eskom Expo. Camps Bay High School Gr 11 learners, Ntando Mambukwe and Sibulele Makalima, went home with Gold medals. They participated at the Cape Town Eskom Expo for Young Scientists. They also received the UCT Science Faculty Special Award for their entry into the Engineering Category.
Their entry was entitled “The Evolution of Radio Telescopes: The M.A.S.R.T.”
Ntando and Sibulele were also the only students at the The Cape Town Eskom Expo to have chosen something based on Space Sciences. The judges described their problem choice as ambitious. They were were impressed by the creative and insightful solutions they provided. The Judges also said that the Mechanical design went beyond “school level expectation”. They also described the duo as knowledgeable, with in-depth answers to the judges questions.
Constant interference
The purpose of their project was to address the problem of constant interference. It sometimes causes inaccurate results of radio telescopes. Many radio frequencies picked up by radio telescopes are man-made radio waves. The frequencies are picked up instead of the radio waves of celestial objects. This prevents radio astronomers from getting the results they are meaning to observe. Another issue is our atmosphere and cloud patterns. It obstruct radio waves from reaching the telescope, making radio astronomical research harder.
Two previously made Space Radio Telescopes and research and design elements of these telescopes were used by Ntando and Sibulele to create two prototypes before they designed their final prototype to address this problem.
Last longer
The learners believe that the final prototype they have designed could surpass the observations of the previous two space radio telescopes. It could also last longer due to the back-up fuel source and the strength and durability of the materials used to build it.
Said Camps Bay High School Principal, Mr Louis Mostert, “We are incredibly proud of Ntando and Sibulele. They tackled a hugely ambitious subject and have put in a massive amount of effort and research into their Gold winning project. We have no doubt that this is just the start of things for them. We will be hearing more from them in the field of Science in years to come.”
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