NTIC Unlocks Students’ Ingenuity with Science, Art Fair

The science and art fair recently organised by the Nigerian Turkish International Colleges (NTIC), Abuja can be described as a memorable experience for students from all NTIC branches across the country as it enabled them display artistic, scientific and technology-oriented inventions geared towards creating a better future for the human race. Uchechukwu Nnaike reports

This year’s science and art fair organised by the Nigerian Turkish International Colleges (NTIC), Abuja has shown the innovative capabilities of students of the school as they demonstrated their readiness to make an impact on the society through their inventions.

The fair, which recently held at the school premises in Abuja served as a platform for the exhibition of amazing inventions by students of NTIC Abuja and also witnessed a computer competition (Infotech) between students from NTIC Abuja, Lagos, Ogun, Kaduna, Kano and Yobe branches.

Visitors to the fair were impressed by the view of a moving solar car made of steel and powered by solar panels designed and created by one of the students, which the students took turns to drive.

There was an electricity generating system next to the solar powered car. The project was shaped in form of a large dish made of mirrors which detects light from sunlight and takes it to a tank filled with water that is heated up and converted into steam. The steam goes into turbines and electricity is generated. The electricity generating system is an infinite generating system and involves no form of air pollution.

According to the Coordinator of the Science Fair, Gungor Sahin, who is also the Head, Department of Physics, NTIC Abuja, the event which began last year as an annual science fair and covered five science subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, maths and computer was named the science and art fair because the school decided to incorporate its art and social science branches. “The aim of the fair is to make NTIC students become innovators of the future and share their experiments and ideas with other schools.

“This is the second annual event. We used to have fairs as weeks within the school for each of the five science subjects. We don’t have enough time in school hours to do these practicals sometimes. By doing this, we are doing like phantom preparation and the students prepare all these experiments. Practically, they see what they do in class and so when they do it, they become happy and want to invent more when they see what they can do with their hands.”
The fair was attended by the permanent secretary and directors in the ministry of science and technology, who inspected the projects displayed by the students and were impressed with what they saw. It also had in attendance about 2,000 viewers including teachers and students from over 30 schools within the FCT and neighbouring states many of whom were amazed by the projects on display.

One of the students, Damilola Phillips while speaking on his project said he worked on the distillation of lemon and orange pills to form limonene.

“Limonene is an organic compound with medicinal and cosmetic properties and can be used as an insecticide. It is gotten from direct steam distillation with a liquid of higher boiling point. Its boiling point is about 96oC and the boiling point of the liquid used is 100oC which is water. The oil in the lemon is boiled and the steam passes through the pipe to the condenser into the conical flask where it is collected in liquid form.”

The duo of Marian Onyekachi and Aisha Lafiyami both in senior secondary one (SS1) worked on mathematics projects. Explaining her project, Onyekachi said she worked on the golden ratio. “This ratio was the ratio God used to create almost everything in the world. This ratio can be defined as length divided into two parts, the bigger part and the smaller part.

“The bigger part is divided by the smaller part and you get 1.618033. The golden ratio compass is an instrument used to calculate the golden ratio and the formula to find the actual golden ratio is ɸ= = 1.618033.”

Lafiyami, who worked on Fibonacci numbers said, “these numbers were created by an Italian mathematician, Leo Fibonacci. These numbers are a sequence in recurrence relation and the formula to get the Fibonacci sequence is Fn=Fn-1 + Fn-2.”

Apart from the 90 sophisticated projects exhibited, the atmosphere was lit up with music and several cuisines made available to the delight of people present at the fair. The spectacle was not complete without the raffle draw organised for the participants, where lucky winners received various prizes.

A teacher from Government Secondary School, Pyakasa, Abuja, Sir Jay, said he would love his school to organise a science fair someday. “The whole place is colourful, the organisation is okay and the communication is okay. The event was educative. I saw one gas and electric propelled oven and I think they really tried on it.”

In the computer competition (Infotech), the students competed in five categories: computer arts, computer design, short movie and Lego robotics which is subdivided into Lego Line Follower and Lego Sumo.

According to the Head, Department of Computer, NTIC Abuja, Erkon Yildirim, there were 35 projects on display. “The students who come first, second and third in each category would be awarded certificates.” The categories were given titles. The computer arts which involved 3D modelling was titled ‘Fantastic World’; the computer design which involved poster design was titled ‘Dialogue among Cultures, People and Religions’; while the short movie was given the title ‘Helping Us’.

“The Lego robotics is the common general purpose robot; the students can easily build the robots by bringing the pieces together by programming it and then see how it works. The Lego sumo on the other hand is one of the traditional wrestling in Japan. We are organising this one in collaboration with the ministry of science and technology and this is the fourth time between NTIC schools. Next year we are trying to expand the competition to other schools in Abuja.”

One of the students from NTIC Yobe, Ismail Mohammed SS2, worked on the Lego robotics which had a touch sensor, sound sensor, colour sensor and light sensor. The sensors worked respectively based on how they were programmed to respond.

Another student whose project was based on computer design and titled: ‘Dialogue among Cultures, People and Religions’, used Photoshop to create a world map with faces of people.

An SS2 student of NTIC, Abuja, Talha Kayra Ondin, said: “Racism is not necessary. For instance, I used the pictures of white people where Nigeria is located on the world map.” He also wrote a message, “respect other people’s religions, traditions then you will live in peace.”

With the quality of projects exhibited at the NTIC’s science and art fair 2016, it is obvious that Nigeria possesses promising young innovators that can move the country forward if their potential are properly harnessed.