Sciencentre - Cape Town

As a former primary school teacher, I've always enjoyed educational visits. The opportunity for hands-on activities on a scale that is difficult to reproduce in the classroom appeals to my visual and kinaethetic learning style. Seeing practical applications of scientific principles explained clearly, especially if they are set in an interactive and fun activity, I believe, are the best way for people to learn and discover for themselves.

The Sciencentre, located in Canal Walk, one of the largest shopping malls in Cape Town, is just such a centre of excellence in science and technology. Andy and I had visited Canal Walk a number of times, and seen the entrance to the Sciencentre. I must admit that the impression from the outside was of a place just for primary-age children, with a few mazes and puzzles for them to investigate. How wrong I was!

The first exhibit is a new one, still being installed, all about recycling. There's a small wormery, linked to clear diagrams describing the process from organic waste to organic fertiliser, which they called 'worm tea'. The plan is to install a huge wormery, where people can see into the various layers, showing the decomposition process. We learnt that the Nelson Hotel, which I had visited with Jaco and Helena a few months ago, have installed their own wormeries, and the 'worm tea' is used on their organic gardens. If we had known about it we could have visited the facility for a tour.

This section of the Sciencentre also encourages recycling of household waste, separating glass, metal, paper and plastic. Although the domestic refuse collection of Cape town has the slogan "Reduce, Re-use, Recycle" displayed on the side of its vehicles, I have yet to see this being applied practically. In the UK we are encouraged to separate our recyclable materials, some of which are collected from our doorsteps, others like cardboard, batteries, clothes and shoes, we are encouraged to take to the local authority refuse centre. In Walsall, our Borough, recycling has now become commonplace and whilst there is always room for improvement, the recycling process is fairly efficient, reducing the amount of waste going into landfill. In South Africa, most recyling is still not done at source. Those at the bottom of the social spectrum can rumage through the refuse bags once they have been dumped on a landfill site, removing anything of value, including recyclable materials. In my opinion this is not a very effective recycling method. However, chatting to one of the Sciencentre's guide's revealed that some areas of Cape Town are now introducing doorstep collections of recyclable materials, and this is at least a step in the right direction.

All the exhibits were of high quality and clearly explained. The basics of physical science, such as light, sound and mechanics, along with many puzzles exploring conceptual thinking strategies, kept us engrossed. We were only able to experiment with about a quarter of them in the time available to us.

This one demonstrates how ultraviolet light reveals the fluorescent properties of some chemicals:

...and this demonstrates the principle of sound waves travelling through pipes, producing notes of different pitch:

...and here is an impression of Jaco's hands in nails:

There was a massive geographical map of southern Africa on the floor, with the political boundaries marked. Here my right toe is pointing out Table Mountain:

...and Helena is sitting in Botswana (a country she will be visiting in March):

The Sciencentre has just achieved a Guiness World Record for the largest working cell phone:

The centre is also home to a giant walk-in camera, with 360 degree images of the surrounding area. Situated on the roof of the shopping mall, the live images are reflected onto a two metre screen, in a darkened room:

At this point the lens was pointing in the direction of Table Mountain. The lens can be focussed by raising or lowering and the guide played with the moving images of cars and people, placing small ramps onto the image, making them look as though they were climbing hills.

The Sciencentre does a lot of educational work with school and college groups and Hendreitte learned that as home schoolers they can join with a larger group for seminars of particular topics. I'm sure they will be back at the Sciencentre very soon.