A Cape Town computer teacher’s rumblings

I had  the rare privilege last weekend of taking two days off school and attending  four days of the 13th annual Science Festival in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Rare because I’ve never been before.

Grahamstown was my home for 15 years but SciFest began in 1996 soon after we left for Cape Town.  The themes this year centred around Charles Darwin’s bi-centenial and the Year of Astronomy.

Husband Mike has attended most of them and his talks this year were on Charles Darwin (Travels with Charley),  Wierd Creatures, Brain Power (mostly comparing boys and girls).

Some of the highlights for me were the Science Workshops and Theatre productions.  Derek Fish and Graham Walker  gave an hilarious skit on “The Science of Sport” with Graham spending much of the play on roller blades.  Another excellent show was Stephen Ashworth from University of East Anglia (UK)’s who demonstrated  the “Science of Music” – creating very fine music from every day objects such as garden hoses and funnels.

There were many academic lectures by well known South African scientists.  George Branch spoke on the myths and magic of evolution, Chris Smith* (one of the BBC “Naked Scientists”) spoke about Bird flu. This is one of Chris’s podcasts on science edutainment.  Roger Smith and David Jacobs of Iziko Museum, Cape Town discussed aspects of the Karroo fossils and the end of the Permian Period (251.4 million years ago) when there was a mass extinction of over 90% of living beings on earth.  Tim Noakes of the Sports Science Institute of S Africa spoke on the international scam in the sports drink industry resulting in athletes becoming waterlogged through excessive drinking of water and sports drinks!  Nina Jablonski is an anthropologist from Pennsylvania State University, USA.  She studies skin pigmentation and how it evolved and she gave a fascinating lecture on human skin colour being the product of evolution.

Children from pre-school to Matric were entertained with science shows workshops, bird ringing, rocket making and flying, go-cart racing and of course the exciting laser shows. There were so many things to attend that I felt as hyper-active as I do when attending the Arts Festival every July. 

I would love to bring a school group next year and have submitted a report to my Heads at Springfield.

It was wonderful being back in Grahamstown again – this time with nearly all my family.  Anja (daughter-in-law) arrived on the Sunday (she was Manager of SciFest until 2007), Ryan was there with the MTN ScienCentre in charge of the interactive displays – and its seems, the Rat and Parrot most evenings!  Our friends Nicki and Irene entertained us and on Saturday evening we celebrated Earth Hour with a whole evening of fun-filled entertainment at Irene’s – no electricity, many candles.  The highlight of the evening was a wicked skit on Cererella, sing songs and poetry readings and a sad elegy to Nicky’s old Labrador, Odin who died a few days ago.

I can’t wait for SciFest 2010!