Joburg students make international science contest top 30

TWO Joburg students are hoping to do the nation proud after they made it through to the semifinals of the Breakthrough Junior Challenge competition.

Aditya Kumar and Milo Shan have beaten out thousands of applicants from around the world to make it into the top 30 at the annual international science contest.

Founded in 2015, the competition is a global science video contest that encourages students to create engaging and imaginative videos that demonstrate difficult scientific concepts and theories in the physical or life sciences.

“Think Steven Spielberg meets Albert Einstein,” the event organisers explained.

Shan and Kumar each created original science videos and are now in the running to win prizes worth $400 000 (R7 107 000), including an overseas university scholarship and a new science lab for their school.

“Winning the competition would be tremendous because it would open pathways to prestigious universities overseas that specialise in science-related courses,” Kumar told the Saturday Star this week.

“After school, I would like to complete a computer science degree, so graduating from an elite university would set me in the right direction.”

The teenager’s science video is related to quantum entanglement, the phenomenon of how measuring the result of one particle from an entangled pair of particles influences the result of the other particle.

“It was an incredibly fun but complicated process putting my video together, and the planning had to be spot-on, as the time limit was only 90 seconds. Therefore, every second counted,” he said.

Kumar, a student at St David’s Marist Inanda, added that he hoped to make science easily understandable for people from all walks of life.

“I find that people often feel that they have to be geniuses to change the world scientifically, because of how complex certain science concepts are.”

“I hope to alter this mindset because in reality science is meant to be fun and entertaining, and if it is so then the brightest of ideas can be sparked.”

If he wins the challenge, his school will be gifted with a new and “desperately needed” science lab.

Kumar would like to be a computer scientist because he feels that career would allow him to express himself creatively as well as develop revolutionary ideas for the betterment of humanity.

“I think as the world progresses we will start to rely more on technology and artificial intelligence.

“Consequently, many jobs will be replaced by machines, which is why having a qualification for a job that specialises in technology will be important.

“Moreover, I am astonished by the brilliant ideas my peers produce at school daily. Thus, having more youngsters involved in science will not only produce potentially revolutionary ideas that may change the world, but also a more sophisticated society that is able to come up with sustainable solutions to its problems.”

Meanwhile, Shan’s science video for the competition concerns special relativity.

“Because I am an avid consumer of science media – from science-related Youtube videos and news articles to research papers and journals – a lot of ideas instantly popped up when I decided to commit to the Breakthrough Junior Challenge.”

The St John’s College student said he then filtered these ideas out by his knowledge of the topics and how easy it would be to explain them. He finally settled on a topic he felt he could comfortably explain intuitively in 90 seconds.

He also did his own animation for the video and hopes that when people watch it they will “see what science actually is”.

“It’s not just about memorisation – science is cool. I want people to be excited about science and be curious to learn more. Science is the closest thing we have to magic in this world.”

Shan’s love for this field came from his grandparents, who used to read science articles from encyclopaedias to him.

“My passion for science has been with me since my early childhood, and I’m very lucky to come from a family of educators. My grandparents, both of whom are retired teachers, introduced science to me in an interesting, engaging and approachable way,” he said.

“Since I was very small, they read many encyclopaedias to me, showing me pictures of the ideas covered in the entries and making sure all my questions were answered.

“On reflection, I basically got introduced to science in the way most people are introduced to magic: weird and wonderful phenomena that could be explained by spell-like laws and formulae. Armed with the power of these ‘spells’, one could bend the world to one’s will, making new wonder materials as light as a feather but stronger than steel, and teleporting particles instantly from one place to another.”

Shan hopes to travel to space some day and perhaps create his own commercial space company.

“Of the prospective careers I am considering, commercial space travel is very close to the top of my list. I think making space travel accessible to all will not only be a necessity to ensure humanity’s continued survival and progression, but also just be extremely cool! After all, who wouldn’t want to have Star Trek in real life?”