St. John’s High School pupils scooped first prize for this year’s Siemens Junior Cyber Junk Yard Challenge.
They walked away with top honours for their winning design for an energy-saving house model.
They were one of five technical high schools and further education institutions across the country that went head-to-head in the final round of the challenge, which is one of South Africa’s most popular science and engineering competitions.
Pupils had to design, build and program a fully functional home energy management system. They had to implement principles of load balancing, power usage calculations and basic logic control along with the principles of cost management.
Schools that spent the day preparing and presenting their solutions were HTS John Vorster (Pretoria), George Campbell School of Technology (Durban), Brackenfell High School (Cape Town), Daniel Pienaar THS (Port Elizabeth) as well as the winners, St. John’s High School (Johannesburg).
The five teams were selected from 25 schools and colleges during the regional round of the challenge in July.
The competition is an annual highlight at engineering faculties and its success at tertiary institutions led to the launch of the junior challenge in 2011.
Siemens South Africa chief executive Siegmar Proebstl said, “This contest inspires youngsters to focus on maths and science so they can pursue a career that excites them. South Africa has a lack of science, engineering and technology skills, with low school maths and science pass rates. In this contest we have already seen fascinating models of houses that save electricity, which means Siemens is achieving its aim of exposing learners to practical technology in a fun and sociable way.”
