Tumelo bags ‘Best Eskom Female Scientist’ award for her Solar Cooler Box
The Eskom Expo for Young Scientists (EEYS) is an expo, or science fair, where learners have a chance to show others their projects about their own science projects.
POLOKWANE – The expo was held in Johannesburg over four days, with learners from Lesotho, Namibia, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania and Mexico competing in this prestigious competition with South Africa as the host country.
Each year selected students from 35 expo regions in South Africa compete against the best young scientists from around the country and around the world.
Projects are showcased by learners for a chance to take home prizes worth more than R8,5 million.
The 13-year-old Tumelo Ramokone, a Gr 7 learner from Mapudithomo Primary School in Nobody with this expo being her first, scored herself best Eskom female scientist for her project, solar cooler box.
“The purpose of my project was to build a cooler box that keeps food, medicine and drinks cool instead of using electricity and this cooler box can also charge your mobile phone,” she said.
Tumelo explained that while her peers were having breaks at school, she went to her mentors to ask for help on how to promote her project.
This, after her project had been selected to represent the Capricorn and Sekhukhune regions in the international competition.
A teacher at Mapudithomo Primary School who is also convener for the expo in the province, Ida Dankuru said Tumelo would arrange with her to come on weekends to help her perfect her work and also use the school’s computers to type her abstract.
“Tumelo is very dedicated and hardworking, there was no day that would pass by without her being concerned with how her project was doing. When she was selected to go to the internationals we knew she would make us proud,” she added.
Tumelo won two gold certificates, a gold medal, a laptop and other prizes, for which she was very grateful.
