Njombe Science Competition

A couple of weeks ago, myself and two other Peace Corps teachers held a science competition weekend in Njombe. Only two schools were able to bring students, but there were 12 in total - 6 from my school and 6 from another near Njombe. Last year, some older volunteers got in touch with a group from MIT which agreed to make a $500 donation to support some kind of science-related activity or conference in Tanzania. We were finally able to make use of the money for this conference, using the funds to cover all the costs of the venue, materials and supplies for the competitions. The students' contribution was covered by them paying for their own transport to and from Njombe.

The competition was a great success! We split the kids up into 4 teams, mixing schools and allowing them to make their own team name and flag. Throughout the weekend, we awarded points to the teams based on their performance in each of the competitions and kept a running standings board to keep track of which team was in the lead.

Density Column Demonstration

In addition to the acutal competitions (which I will describe in more detail shortly), we set up some short science demonstrations that highlighted certain topics which are covered in the syllabus, and also introduced them to some math and logic puzzles like sudoku, which they loved. Students here don't really get exposed to many (if any) critical thinking activities like this, which are so common for young students in more developed education systems, and have a huge effect on learning development in general. But it was great to see them all have so much interest in the puzzles, and I was very impressed with how quickly a lot of them were able to pick them up. All of the students were Form I and Form II, so they were pretty limited in their knowledge base and English ability, but they all were very excited to do the activities and went far beyond our expectations.

As for the events, here's a brief rundown on some of the competitions we put them through:

Egg Drop - given a bunch of junk, design some kind of container that can keep an egg safe after dropping it from 8-10 feet. This one was very interesting actually - apparently the students (and even Tanzanian teachers) were not at all familiar with the concept of a parachute, which is usually the standard approach used in making egg drop devices. So all of the teams just tried to pad the containers as much as possible in order to protect the egg, and 2 of the 4 teams still succeeded. It made me realize that without TV and textbooks, there really is no reason why they should know of parachutes, so after we tested their designs, we made a quick example of one with a parachute and showed how much of an effect it had on the outcome.

Jenga Jengo ("Build a Building") - build the tallest structure possible, as quickly as possible, that can withstand a book-waving wind test by using only sheets of paper and masking tape. All of the groups seemed to go straight for house-type buildings as opposed to sky scrapers, which again was an indication of how little they are exposed to. Though some of them were very tricky and gave themselves an advantage by putting their scissors inside of the buildings as a weight to keep it from tipping over. Clever girl...


Raft Rally - make some kind of boat out of a small piece of aluminum foil that can hold the most weight before sinking. A couple groups did me proud by making origami-style boats, but quickly learned the difficulties of doing such things with aluminum foil... especially since they weren't allowed extra sheets in case of rips. Whammy. But the winner held up 2 large rocks and a potato!

Drop Zone - make a plastic bag parachute to safely drop a paper clip passenger as close as possible to a target on the ground. After their brief introduction to parachutes earlier, the kids did a great job making some themselves.

Bridge Challenge - the grand finale and my favorite of them all. Design and build a bridge using limited materials, BUT instead of being given the materials, each team gets 15 Science Shillings and must buy everything from a science shop. All kinds of materials were available - straws, toothpicks, wooden skewers, bamboo sticks, tape, rubber bands, glue, etc. but the kids had to decide which materials were most important becuase bonus points were given for each Science Shilling leftover at the end. Again, I was incredibly impressed with what they were able to come up with, and the winning bridge held a bucket with 18 giant rocks. In fact we didn't have enough to start with and had to run outside to grab massive bricks just to see how much the thing could hold.

All in all, I couldn't have been happier with how the weekend went, especially in terms of how excited it made the students participate in these competitions and put their science knowledge and intuition to the test. It would also be great to be able to show this to all students, so that they could all see some fun and interesting applications of science subjects, which is why I'm hoping to replicate it soon after the midterm break at my school.

Helping to organize and put on this science competition reminded me of why I had originally had thoughts of trying to continue doing hands-on-science-related work in Tanzania after my 2 years of service runs out in July/August. It really inspired me to look into the options of extending with Peace Corps, with the hopes of being able to travel to different parts of the country and put on similar conferences and competitions for other Peace Corps schools. This event was so cheap and easy to plan and put on that there's no reason why it can't be duplicated for any other school. The only problem for volunteers is finding funding sources and going through grant-writing processes and preparing venues to hold these kind of conferences. But I feel like if I can continue as a volunteer with a primary focus on making those kinds of arrangements, there can be a ton of similar and improved science competitions all over the country, which can hopefully help to raise interest in science among Tanzanian students and possibly increase the incredibly low percentage of students who even bother continuing to study science subjects through Form IV. I'll keep the updates coming on whether this idea actually seems feasible, but in the meantime, I'm very excited for the success of our first science competition, and also for the hope of doing another one at my school in the next couple of weeks!