For all readers of this article outside of Grahamstown, I feel very, very sorry for you. For once the tables have turned, and you can keep your Mug and Bean restaurants, your donkey dung-free streets and your five storey shopping complexes, because for seven days of the year, we have Scifest.
For all readers of this article outside of Grahamstown, I feel very, very sorry for you. For once the tables have turned, and you can keep your Mug and Bean restaurants, your donkey dung-free streets and your five storey shopping complexes, because for seven days of the year, we have Scifest.
It supplies us with an overload of information about things we never knew existed, and it's glorious. When you open the Scifest programme, some buzz words immediately catch your attention, like “Exploding stars”, “Nasa's space shuttle”, and “Robotics tournament”.
Granted, I'm thoroughly a humanities person at heart, but all this is too exciting for words, and even more exciting is the quality automotive content at this year's festival. We've all watched at least one F1 Grand Prix (by choice or not) and sit in awe when the pit stops come up and a million mechanics all do their bit in beautiful harmony.
For those mechanics it must be quite something to be involved in the flurry, and the pressure is probably mind-numbing as a racer's career could depend on you screwing up or not. Their conversations probably go a little like this: “What's your job dude?” “Oh me? I'm the rear-left-tyre-nut-releaser guy.” “Lucky! I'm just the lollipop guy.”
To get the real feel of this excitement though, why not try out the Department of Science and Technology's remote controlled water-car races exhibit. You get to be the chief of a pit crew and call the shots on how much fuel (water) the car needs to tactically beat your opponents.
Remember, the lighter the car the faster you can go! That's why my car's petrol gauge always sits with the needle right at the bottom, because I'm clever like that.
Speed can be fun and dangerous, but the fun trumps the danger every time. This is definitely the case with the Bloodhound Project and its car, the Bloodhound SSC, which is a returning aspect of Scifest this year, and an extremely exciting motoring venture that South Africa is involved in.
Headed in South Africa by Dave Rowley, it's a ground-breaking engineering venture that shares its information freely with educators and students in an attempt to excite young minds at the possibility of making something fast enough to break the sound barrier.
Rowley used to be an engineer at British Aerospace where he primarily worked on the Concorde programme. Now he's turned his sights to the Bloodhound SSC which will hopefully break the world land speed record. Next year perhaps we can convince him to bring a Concorde out as well.
The car is designed to reach a top speed of 1 690 km/h. Imagine using that to drive from Cape Town to Johannesburg? It would take you less than an hour! Although admittedly your face would probably have migrated to the back of your head by the time you arrived.
In 2013 there are plans for a speed run in Hakskeenpan in the Northern Cape, but if you think 2013 might be a busy time, next week Monday Rowely will be giving a talk on the project up at the Monument which you can go to instead.
A Scifest favourite that is present every year is the Popular Mechanics organised Soap Box Derby, to be held this coming Sunday at 9am at the 1820 Settlers' Monument. Your team of four is supplied with a kit and you build the fastest, coolest soap-box car you can.
When everyone's piece of technical genius is completed, an exciting race down the Monument hill ends the day. From experience, I would advise not to try the cutting edge “face first, lying flat” style car, you might appear low and stream lined, but if your take a corner too quickly, competitors tend to go flying face first into the spectators.
So if you fancy yourself the next chief designer for Bugatti, or if you just want to have a laugh, the Soap-Box Derby is always a Scifest hit. So here we've covered three of many activities that are ultra cool this year. I implore everyone to take advantage of this plethora of entertainment, with the by-product of education, that we're lucky enough to have on our doorstep.
That being said, I'm off to a workshop on dinosaurs, see you there.
