By Betty Kituyi - Coordinator
Expanding Upcountry
Early March 2010 has been a time for Café Sci to expand upcountry to new schools! Of the five Café Sci meetings, 3 were in upcountry schools in Mbale, Jinja and Luwero Districts (Manafwa High School, Busoga College Mwiri, and Ndege S.S respectively)!. Our speakers enthusiasm for this program was shown in their sacrificing of so much time to travel long distances (5 hours hours – too and fro!) to meet the students. This impacted on our budget because we had to give twice the amount of money we normally give for fuel. We really have to work hard at identifying scientists in the localities for upcountry schools to cut down on the costs of transporting them all the way from Kampala.
Press Coverage
Café Sci had more feasibility in a unique Ugandan Newspaper, The Discovery on 8th March 2010 when its article on ‘How the Brain works’ for Bishop Cipriano S.S was published! The Discovery is dedicated to covering news on science and technology from Uganda and other parts of the world.
Recent Café Sci meetings
Manafwa High School
Café Sci Students of Manafwa High School met on 1 March 2010 to hear the speaker’s first hand experience on designing The Electric Vehicle.
The group was meeting for the first time after the brutal death of their Patron, Mr. Robert Washitwaya. The new teacher, Mr. Emmanuel Esiru introduced the speaker and coordinator to the students.
Mr. Babita Douglas, an electrical engineer at Uganda Clays, Mbale, shared that as a student of electrical engineering at Makerere University, in 2008, his department had been selected to participate in a project undertaken by several universities world-wide to design an electric car. The model of the car they worked on was an ‘assisted human powered vehicle’. Different universities were asigned to work on different parts of the vehicle. Douglas’s group worked on ‘the power train’, which was the electronic component. The final exhibition of the vehicle took place in Tulin Italy in 2008, were the participants assembled the vehicle components together.
Your browser may not support display of this image. Douglas told the students that the Ugandan group’s main challenge was having to convince the doubting teams from the developed countries that they could do the task asigned. He said that his group actually succeeded in wiring the vehicle which was able to move a few metres!
The students heard that the project aimed at designing an environmentally friendly car that would not use fossil fuels, hence contribute towards curbing global warming. Such a car is much cheaper to maintain and would work best in cities. The students may have found it interesting that the first car to be made was an electric car!
The questions students asked:
- How does the electric car work?
- How would one repair such a car if it developed a problem?
- Suppose you are in the forest and the battery drains, what would you do?
- Why did the first electir car fail to take off on the market?
- How soon will the electric car be on the market?
For the next Café Sci meetings, the students would like to look at:
- Test-tube babies
- Aliens
Kiira S.S Café Sci
For this school, Café Sci is an exciting event attended by the whole school. On 3rd March 2010 however, when the school sat under the shade in the school compound to participate in the talk on the mobile phone and its effects, the teacher in charge requested that only students who were interested in Café Sci would stay. Only a handful of students left leaving behind over 300 students!
From Mr. Okuonzi John the speaker, (National coordinator for African Technology Network, lecturer Kyambogo University dept. of Electrical and Engineering) students heard that the mobile phone is a radio! The only difference he said was that the mobile phone recieves and sends audial messages.
Your browser may not support display of this image. The students were lucky to have telecommunications masts behind their school which the speaker used as reference points to explain how messages are sent from one mobile phone to another.
He cautioned that young people below 14 years should not use mobile phones since they may have harmful effects to their developing brains. The social impacts on the mobile phone was also discussed.
Student’s questions were:
- If one’s voice is changed into a message, in what form is the message received.
- What is the idea behind the sim card? Do walk talkies have sim cards?
- Why do some phones lose network?
- Why does the mobile phone interfere with telelevision or radio signal transmission?
Busoga College Mwiri Café Sci
The Mwiri boys hosted their first ever café on 5 March 2010. The students’ topic on the mobile phone, turned out to be controversial because students are not allowed to carry mobile phones to school. The school rules against the mobile phone did not impend the café advert being hang on the staffroom notice board nor the café sci discussions. The students interacted freely with the speaker. The teacher in charge, Mr. Okolomo was happy that his students were meeting the expert on the mobile phone, a topic which he had briefly tackled recently in his physics lesson with one of the classes!
The café talk accidentally evolved into two phases. The first phase was the general introduction of discussion on the day’s topic to a mass of about 180 students in the student’s main hall. This group heard like their friends in Kiira S.S from mr. Okuonzi John that the mobile phone is actually a radio but differs in its ability to receive and send out messages. The questions raised students revolved around security issues associated with the mobile phone for example, wether one can receive a bomb through the mobile phone.
Your browser may not support display of this image. The second phase of the café took place outside the main hall when a group of about 18 students held the speaker for more 30 minutes in a more one- -to-one discussion on this topic! From this group, a student leader for Café Sci (Marko Mpabulungi ) was nominated. These students want to discuss the topic: What is too much or too little technology? The proposed date for the next talk is 2 April 2010.
The other questions students asked were:
- If sound waves travel at the speed of light, why is there a lapse in long distance phones during the receiving and sending of calls?
- Is it true that two mobile an egg placed two mobile phones can get cooked?
- Mwiri hill has very many phone masts: do the masts cause any harm to the environment?
Ndejje S.S Café Sci
Ndejje S.S lauched their first café in high gear with the Café Sci student leaders displaying excellent leadership skills. The topic for the 10 March 2010 meeting was: Do Boys and Girls think differently? Mrs Sarah Bunoti a lecturer of Psychology at Kyambogo University was the speaker. Opening the talk to the students, Sarah gave students two questions and got answers from equal numbers of boys and girls volunteering! The answers were recorded and after her talk, the students were guided to conclude for themselves whether the boys and girls attending the café thought differently on concerning those questions! One of the questions was: What do you think about Ndejje S.S?
The girls responses were:
- It is a mixed girls and boys school
- The school is of high moral standards
The boys responses were:
- The school is a long distance from Kampala city
- It has high academic standards
From these answers, it was clear that the boys and girls indeed thought differently but that their differences complimented and supported each other. Also, that the differences are influenced by both genetic and cultural factors and that social roles dictated what it means to be a girl and a boy.
At another point in the discussion, a boy sitting next to a girl was asked to exchange shoes! Sarah guided the students to explain why boys and girls at certain age group seemed to have greeter differences in their physique!
Students questions drove Sarah to talk about the intelligence quotient, learning styles and telepathy!
In his vote of thanks to the speaker, the teacher in charge, Mr. Odida summarised his impression of Café Sci as follows:
- Café Sci is helping our students to take their position in life
- It stirs students up to develop a logical approach to life – to become quick thinkers
- It is imparting life skills
- Our students are getting an opportunity to be in touch with the wider world of science.
Nabisunsa Girls Café Sci
Nabisunsa girls met for the second time this term for their junior café meeting on the 12th to learn more about genetically modified crops. The 15 girls had a lively close conversation with Mr. Sendikadiwa James, a teacher of Agriculture at Makerere College School. James told the girls that gone are the days when we can rely on chance happenings of pollination to produce crops! That GMO’s are developed for the purpose of producing food with desired qualities, quantities at the time it is much needed especially now when over 1.3 billion people face starvation. He said that supporters of this technology aim at improving human servival. The girls heard that Uganda has just signed the first level of GMO regulations. These regulations allow GMO products into the country. Uganda does not have a law nor the technology to enable GMO’s to be grown in the country.
The girls asked:
- Does it mean that GMO’s are being grown only in developed countries?
- Tell us more about genetically modified animals.
- Why are bacteria and viruses used in biotechnology?
- Do scientists use the gene from tall trees to make short people tall?
