Wes­ley Gib­bings

On June 26, a sci­ence project con­ceived by 17 young North­gate Col­lege (NGC) stu­dents will en­ter space on board a US rock­et launched from the Wal­lops Space Fa­cil­i­ty in Vir­ginia.

The St Au­gus­tine-based school earned the priv­i­lege when the young team came up with a way of squeez­ing a sci­en­tif­ic ex­per­i­ment in­to a four cen­time­tre cube for test­ing in space.

Thir­teen year old, bud­ding sci­en­tist, Zachary Joel, put the chal­lenge like this: "Our school's de­c­la­ra­tion says that we are glob­al and bor­der­less and I learned that we can be bor­der­less in­side of a four cen­time­tre cube."

The col­lege topped in­ter­na­tion­al com­peti­tors en­ter­ing the US-based Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­gi­neer­ing, and Math (STEM) ini­tia­tive Cubes in Space, named for the in­ven­tion of Hun­gar­i­an sculp­tor Er­no Ru­bik, who came up with the Ru­bik's Cube in 1974.

The T&T school won in the Top De­sign cat­e­go­ry.

"We knew that it was some­thing we want­ed to give the stu­dents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so we de­cid­ed to en­ter," North­gate di­rec­tor, Yolande La Pierre, said de­spite late no­tice from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion�three days be­fore the dead­line for an ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est.

The school di­rec­tor said "the idea be­hind the com­pe­ti­tion was for stu­dents to move a con­cept from the de­sign stage to ac­tu­al ex­e­cu­tion and see the ap­pli­ca­tion of cur­ricu­lum con­tent in every­day life."

"They (stu­dents) had to brain­storm which ideas could work best and con­duct re­search in­to space ex­plo­ration," La Pierre told T&T Guardian. This, she said, was chal­leng­ing since, "we do not have a space pro­gramme in the Caribbean."

"They al­so in­ter­viewed en­gi­neers and physi­cists to get some guide­lines on how the project could move from a con­cept to an ac­tu­al ex­per­i­ment," she added. "They were not giv­en many pa­ra­me­ters ex­cept the size and that it had to be some­thing that could pass the strict safe­ty rules of the Space Acad­e­my."

And that is what they did.

"Apart from all the sci­ence, I learned a lot about pa­tience and sac­ri­fice. It took a lot of pa­tience and dili­gence to put all the small pieces to­geth­er. And it took a lot of sac­ri­fice in giv­ing up all our time to come and work on this project. But in the end, it was all worth it," said 14-year-old Form Three stu­dent Bran­don Wood­ing.

The Ion­iza­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion project pro­pos­al writ­ten by the stu­dents ar­gued that "on our plan­et now, nat­ur­al re­sources are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly lim­it­ed and it makes sense for us to con­tin­ue look­ing for new, clean, en­er­gy sources. Hu­mans have bare­ly start­ed to ex­plore the lim­its of space, and this is where the so­lu­tion to our prob­lem may lie. Well, al­most in space.

"The ionos­phere is at the edge of our at­mos­phere. At this up­per part of the at­mos­phere, so­lar ra­di­a­tion caus­es atoms to lose and gain elec­trons cre­at­ing ions and al­so leav­ing loose elec­trons," the pro­pos­al said.

"With our ex­per­i­ment, we aim to in­ves­ti­gate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a new, re­new­able en­er­gy source. We plan to do this by look­ing at the ef­fect of the ionos­phere on the volt­age pro­duced by an elec­tro­mag­net­ic gen­er­a­tor."

Se­bas­t­ian Rud­den, a Form Three stu­dent in­volved in the project said, "In con­struct­ing the cube I learned that we have to do every­thing care­ful­ly and not rush things down be­cause if things weren't done prop­er­ly, the fi­nal ex­per­i­ment might not have worked."

La Pierre said the vic­to­ry was sig­nif­i­cant not on­ly for the col­lege but for the coun­try.

"As a na­tion we are known for many things on the pos­i­tive side we are known for our cul­tur­al cre­ativ­i­ty, warm cli­mate, friend­ly de­meanour and high­er stan­dard of liv­ing in the re­gion due to the hy­dro­car­bon sec­tor," she said.

"On the neg­a­tive we have many con­cerns crime, cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism, youth delin­quen­cy, en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion," the NGC di­rec­tor added.

"I think T&T can cer­tain­ly ben­e­fit from the pos­i­tive spin this has on our ca­pac­i­ty for sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy and the de­vel­op­ment of our hu­man cap­i­tal.

"In a small coun­try with no space ex­plo­ration pro­gramme in our re­gion, with lim­it­ed phys­i­cal re­sources our stu­dents have been able to pro­duce an ex­per­i­ment that has re­al-world im­pli­ca­tions and may pos­si­bly change the course of his­to­ry," La Pierre said.

Four­teen-year-old Con­rad Taitt put it like this, "I learned that it is im­por­tant for schools to par­tic­i­pate in these kinds of com­pe­ti­tions be­cause if you don't par­tic­i­pate you nev­er know what you might come up with and what you come up with might change the course of the world."