My Science School

Being asked to drop out of school because one cannot afford the fees can be heartbreaking for someone who wants to learn. William Kamkwamba had to quit his schooling when his family ran out of funds to support his education because of a famine. But William loved learning new things, and school education wasn’t the only way for him to do so. This is his story.

The drive to learn

William Kamkwamba was born on August 5, 1987 in Dowa, Malawi, and grew up on his family farm in Masitala village, Wimbe.

William was educated in Wimbe Primary School and on the completion of his eighth grade, was accepted to Kachokolo Secondary School.

William was just a few months into his freshman year at school when his family asked him to drop out. They were unable to fund his schooling as the famine in the country in 2001 had pushed them into a financial crisis.

Though he was upset, William did not accept his fate. Instead, he started borrowing books from a small community lending library in his primary school. As he kept reading more and more books, he started to develop intrest in electronics. He would also repair radios in the village, though it would not earn him much money.

Harnessing the wind

One day in the library, he found two textbooks related to energy and electricity – Explaining Physics, and Using Energy. The cover of Using Energy featured towering windmills which “appeared so powerful that they made the photo itself appear to being motion”. It also explained in detail how to make a windmill and its many uses.

William was inspired by the image and the topic. He thought windmills might be the answer to bring Malawi out of darkness.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa, short on many resources. However, the country receives a steady wind flow, making windmills a viable option for producing electricity.

William decided to build a windmill of his own to power bulbs in his home. He started with a small prototype using a radio motor. Then, with help from his friend and a cousin, William started his search for makeshift parts to construct the real windmill.

His plan was to attach blades to the axle of a bicycle and generate electricity through a bike dynamo (a small electrical generator for bicycles). So, when the wind blows the blades, the sprocket and bike chain would spin the bike wheel that would charge the dynamo and send current to the house through a wire.

He sourced the parts of his windmill through a broken bicycle, tractor fan blade, an old shock absorber, and blue gum trees. He hooked the windmill to a car battery for storage of electricity.

When he was done, his windmill’s wing span measured eight feet and sat atop a 15-foot-tall rickety tower.

His creation was a success, and hid house and his windmill managed to light up his house and also charge the mobile phones of neighbours.

The word spreads

William’s windmill attracted attention from the moment it was completed. Villagers thronged his home to see the windmill.

In 2006, an education official from the region who heard about the windmill, came to see the it and was shocked to know that William had been out of school for nearly five years.

Impressed by his creation, the official arranged for William to attend secondary school at the government’s expense. He also invited journalists to see the windmill, and a story was published in the Malawi Daily Mail. This, in turn caught the attention of bloggers and the organisers for the Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conference.

In 2007, William spoke at the TED global conference in Tanzania. Post which, venture capitalists stepped forward with offers to fund his education and projects.

Spreading his wings

The money from capitalists helped William put his cousin and several other friends back in school. It also paid for his family’s medical needs.

With the money, William also went on to drill a borehole for a well and water pump, install drip irrigation in his father’s fields, and install solar panels in his and a few other homes.

William finished his schooling and attended the Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, the U.S., where he graduated with a degree in 2014.

He is currently working with organisations and helping in developing infrastructure in his village and country.

What makes him special?

Despite facing financial constraints, William found a way to pursue his love for learning and, in turn, lit up homes and the lives of the people in his village.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Sometimes, one inspiring moment can lead to be creation of a beautiful thing. For Ann Makosinski, that moment came during her trip to the Philippines with her mother. And ever since that moment, Ann has only been moving forward when it comes to inventions.

A passion for creation

Ann was born on October 3, 1977, in Victoria, British Coloumbia, Canada. Growing up, Ann loved creating things, an interest she has been nurturing since she was seven. She would make things with a hot glue gun and stuff she found around her home. She knew her inventions might not work, but she was captivated by the idea of piecing things together and creating new things.

Ann wasn’t given many toys, so she began making her own. Her first toy was a box of transistors.

The Hollow Flashlight

During one of her trips to the Philippines, Ann met her friends, who told her that they were unable to perform well at school as they didn’t have enough daylight hours to study. They would often have no electricity in the night.

Ann, who was then a high school student at St. Michaels University School in Victoria, decided to apply whatever she had learned about energy-harvesting materials through her experiments to come up with an invention – the Hollow Flashlight.

Energy-harvesting is the process where energy generated by body heat, movements, etc. Are captured and converted to obtain relatively small levels of power.

Ann used this technique to create a flashlight that would power itself from the heat generated by the human body, especially the hand that holds the light.

Ann tested her invention and found that the light from her flashlight shone brighter as the outside air got colder, since the body generates more heat when exposed to cold. However, even in warmer conditions, her flashlight managed to sustain a strong beam of light for more that 20 minutes.

In 2014, when she was 16, Ann registered the flashlight for the Google Science Fair and won the top prize in her age category.

Ann also won the gold medal and the Energy Award at the Canada-Wide Science Fair International Science and Engineering Fair for her invention.

Her next invention was a mug that harvests the excess heat from a hot drink while it cools down, and converts it into electricity. The invention, called e-Drink also won several awards at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

Creating toys for education

In 2017, when Ann was on an expedition to northern Canada, she found a beach encrusted with trash of burnt plastic, glass, compost and batteries.

Ann was startled by what she saw. She wanted to play a part in protecting the environment, and the following year, at her workspace in Victoria, Ann came up with an idea.

Ann started working on toy to teach kids about renewable energy.

The brightly coloured, cute toys make sounds, spin or light up when they are sun or wound they are underwater, placed in the sun or wound up – demonstrating different ways of generating power.

Ann hopes to bring out the toys in the market sometime this year and eventually hire a team of metallurgists and engineers to work on scaling the energy-harvesting technology to bring the Hollow Flashlight to the public.

Ann founded her own company, Makotronics Enterprises Inc. In 2016, and is currently pursuing a degree English Literature from the University of Victoria Canada.

What makes her special?

Her passion for invention and a go-getter attitude. Ann kept piecing together different things and conducting experiments. When she noticed problems such as the lack of electricity and environmental pollution, she was quick to use her skills and devise ways to tackle the issue through her inventions.

Did you know?

According to an article published in CNN, Ann turned down an engineering scholarship and pursued a degree in arts instead. This interest in arts is said to have led her to a more imaginative way of using her thermoelectric technology.

 

Picture Credit : Google

They say, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But what do you do with scrap? You invent!

Kelvin doe from Sierra Leone, Africa, scoured trash bins in his neighbourhood for scrap material when he was 10. Why? To turn them into something useful for his community because the country was just recovering from the effects of a decade-long Civil War, which had left them lacking in infrastructure such as power supply.

Now, 23, Kelvin has invented many things and hopefully, inspires the youngsters in his country to do the same too.

This is his story.

Bringing light to homes

Born on October 26, 1996 in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Kelvin Doe wanted to do something for his neighbourhood’s intermittent power supply and frequent blackouts when he was 10. He started working on his skills and began collecting scrap materials from trash bins. By the time he was 13, he came to be known as a ‘self-taught engineer’ when he made his own battery, capable of powering homes. Kelvin combined acid, soda and metal, and put the ingredients in a tin cup. He waited for the mixture to dry and wrapped a tape around the cup to make his first battery. It might sound simple, but Kelvin failed several times before making a successful prototype. He hasn’t had to purchase a battery ever since, and his invention has helped power many gadgets in the neighbourhood.

DJ Focus

The curious mind didn’t top with just powering homes. He went on to power his own radio station as well. How, you ask?

Kelvin’s next creation was a generator. He modified an old rusty stabilizer he found in the dustbin and either picked the other components of the generator, such as the motor and plug, from the garbage, or made them at home.

And that’s how he powered his fully-equipped radio station, complete with a custom music mixer, recycled CD player and antenna, allowing his neighbours to tune in. Kelvin came to be known as the station’s DJ Focus, and his friends became journalists and station managers. The average age of his crew was 12!

In the spotlight

Kelvin’s talent found wider recognition when he won Innovate Salone in 2012. The competition encouraged students from Sierra Leone to invent solutions for problems they faced in their daily lives. Over 300 applications were submitted and eight finalists received several types of special assistance such as money to develop a prototype of their ideas and a three-day immersive summer innovation camp. Kelvin was one among them.

He travelled to the U.S. for the innovation camp and attended the 2012 World Maker Faire in New York, where he was part of the “Meet the Young Makers” panel with four American inventors.

From there, Kelvin went on to become the youngest person in history to be invited to the “Visiting Practitioner’s Program” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He also went on to present his inventions to undergraduate students at Harvard College, Cambridge, and the MIT.

In 2013, Kelvin signed a USD 1,00,000 solar project pact with Canadian high speed service provider Sierra WiFi, and in 2016, he became an Honorary Board member of Emergency USA. This is an organisation that provides free medical and surgical care to victims of war and poverty.

Kelvin today hosts workshops and supports youngsters of Sierra Leone by providing them educational resources and tools.

What makes him special?

Kelvin made the best use of the opportunity he had. From a ‘self-taught engineer’, who made things out of scrap, to signing a solar project contract, and providing support to youngsters in his country, Kelvin has come a long way.

 

Picture Credit : Google

 

It is said that nothing in this world is constant, except change. This could be a change in situation, a change of place, a change in friends, or even a change in ideology.

This is the story of two siblings – Hans and Sophie Scholl – who were executed 77 years ago, on February 22, 1943 for speaking up against the Nazi regime in Germany in a non-violent way, using the power of language.

Growing up in Nazi Germany

Hans and Sophie Scholl were two among five children born to Robert and Magdalena. Hans, the elder of the two, was born in 1918, and Sophie in 1921.

The siblings were still in school when the National Socialist German Workers’ Party’s (the Nazi party) leader Adolf Hitler took power in 1933 as Chancellor of Germany.

Robert, their father, was a liberal man and taught his children tolerance. He did not approve of Germany’s new leader. However, Hans and Sophie grew up being fascinated with the idea of National Socialism. Both of them joined the youth wings of the party – Hitler Youth, and Union of German Girls – and quickly held leadership positions.

A change in views

During their time with the youth wing, the siblings witnessed the party. They realised that this was against their idea of National Socialism and slowly started to move away.

By 1942, the siblings left the youth wings. The same year, Hans, who was studying medicine at the University of Munich, was called to the Eastern Front to serve at the warfront along with other Medicine students. In the three months he spent at the Front, Hans witnesses the inhumanity of his government and the massive destruction caused by war. The students were also concerned about the fate of Jews who were deported.

By the time he returned, Hans was completely against the Nazi rule.

The White Rose

Soon, at the University of Munich, where the Schools were studying, a group started forming. Hans, Sophie, a few other students, and a philosophy professor formed the core of the group that came to be known as The White Rose – a student-led resistance movement.

The group managed to acquire a manual printing press and began creating leaflets that urged and encouraged people to resist the Nazi rule. “Do not forget that every nation deserves the government that it endures,” they wrote in the first pamphlet.

The White Rose started mailing the pamphlets to random people in the phone directory, took them in suitcases with them wherever they went, and left them in phone booths. They even started painting graffiti on the walls of the University of Munich with slogans such as “Freedom” and “Hitler the Mass Murderer”. Some of their work began spreading to places as far as Austria.

The White Rose did all this anonymously, since anti-Nazi speech was being monitored carefully by the Gestapo (the secret state police).

Capture and execution

On February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie carried a suitcase filled with leaflets to the University of Munich and distributed them anonymously. They decided to empty the extra leaflets into the courtyard and were caught by custodian Jakob Schmid, who immediately informed the Gestpo.

The siblings were arrested and interrogated for nearly four days. Though they initially denied the acquisition, they later admitted to it, in a bid to save the other members of The White Rose. However, a note in Hans’ pocket unwittingly gave away the name of a third member.

On February 22, 1943, the three members were sentenced to death by the People’ Court, led by Judge-President Roland Freisler.

They were executed the same day by guillotine.

Subsequently, other members of The White Rose were captured and executed or imprisoned. But their resistance had left its mark.

What makes them special?

The Schools were courageous. They weren’t afraid to admit they were wrong in supporting the Nazi party, and neither were they afraid to raise their voices against the crimes committed by the Nazi government.

 

Picture Credit : Google