We had a ball at Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair this year, speaking to some of the smartest kids htxt.africa has ever met. And looking at the great projects being turned out by Africa’s teams, you can’t help but be proud.
We’ve featured some already, Here’s three more worth looking at:
First, there’s Thapelo Nthite and Kgothatso Molemi from Lebone ll College in Phokeng, with their secure password generator.
‘The aim of the project was to develop a computer application that would generate secure passwords on behalf of the user which the user does not have to store or remember. This application lets the user input answers to five specific security questions that will act as a key, to decrypt the source code that will generate and display the password; therefore by entering the exact same data to those specific questions results in the same password being generated every time.
“Current password generators provide random passwords of no significance to the user, but through the use of a user input key every password generated by the application is relevant to the user. The application is designed to reduce the number of times people forget and try to retrieve or reset their online passwords.
“The password is not stored in a database or any form of secondary storage, therefore eliminating the threat of the password and valuable information being compromised by hackers. The password is regenerated every time the exact same answers to the specific questions are entered, thus the password is never stored or known by any computing system besides that being used by the server.
The program was written using Java and the generation of the passwords is done by complex linear calculations. The program was designed to work efficiently even with low -performance hardware; all devices that are java enabled can run the application. The application was successful in reducing the number of people who forgot their passwords by 89% in a sample of a 100 people. The results show that the application was a success.”
Next up, there’s Lungelo Sigudla from Newcastle High School, who found a way to make a cheaper, more environmentally alternative to conventional anthrasite coal, using pine cones.
“The purpose of this project was to create an efficient, reliable, low-cost and alternative source of energy from pine cones. Mature female Pinus coulteri cones were used in the study. In the experiment, the woody scales were removed and partially combusted for 5 – 10 minutes to form charcoal. The central axis of the pinecone was left intact forming the centre of the finished briquette. The manufactured charcoal was pulverized, sieved and added to melted candle wax together with the residue of harder charcoal pieces. This was added to a second unprocessed pine cone, placed at the centre of an aluminium can and compressed using a hydraulic 10 ton press. This turned the mixture into a briquette.
“Different binding agents (including candle wax and starch) were examined to determine which was the most effective to form the final briquette. The cost and temperatures of briquettes formed by the different binders were compared to determine binding and cost effectiveness.
“The briquettes were burnt to determine their efficiency of combustion by observing their heat temperatures, combustion duration and ability to boil different volumes of water at consistent briquette sizes. The experimentations were also able to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of sustaining combustion between intact pine cones and the briquettes. The results indicate that Pinus coulteri briquette cones are able to heat water and are a potentially efficient energy source for heating.”
And the last of my favourites comes from Priyal Varsani and Davyani Vasta from Shree Cutchi Leva Patel Samaj School in Nairobi, who have the beginnings of a pretty decent biofuel in the pipeline.
“The endophytic tree fungus, Gliocladium Roseum from the Ulmo tree, expels hydrocarbons which could be used as fuel. The purpose of this project is to identify the fungus, Gliocladium Roseum, grow and harvest the fungus and analyze for the hydrocarbons present in the substance produced by the fungus.
“Gliocladium Roseum is also found on rotten wine grapes. In the present work, we also aim to exploit this fungus for biodiesel production, by the fractional distillation. We have evaluated the process for production of biodiesel by growing and harvesting the fungus from Oatmeal agar. We used oatmeal-salt agar because of its constituents, for our evaluation.
“Using graphs-line graphs from the tables and also comparing the boiling points of pure substances with the isolates for Data Analysis. This showed that, although quite some work still has to be done, Gliocladium Roseum (from the rotten grapes and also, Ulmo tree) have the potential to be tomorrow’s source of biodiesel.
“In conclusion it is possible to produce high quality biodiesel that runs engines longer than diesel from the Gliocladium Roseum.”
[Image – Societyforscience.org]
