Alex Doyle
Hi im Alex, and I study Physics, Maths, Law and Geography at Dereham Sixth Form. I'm 17 and enjoy playing real time strategy and first person shooter computer games.
I have been with the astronomy club for since 2001 and enjoy looking at all the different stars and planets.
My hobbies include swimming, walking, climbing, sailing and diving. I am also interested in aerospace design.
First of all I have to thank everyone who made this trip possible, the sponsors for sponsoring us and everyone else who spent hours tirelessly organising every detail of this trip and making it the once in a lifetime event that it was.
I worked as part of the spectrum group. I completed my part of the project well before the trip; this was in part due to the fact that I was away for the two weeks before the trip and only arrived back in England two days before leaving. This meant I had no idea what state our project was in, however the other members of our group had done a good job in finishing it.
After a 12 hour flight we arrived in Cape Town . Over the next 2 weeks we went around 6 of Cape Town ’s township schools and the 2 schools in Sutherland. I was amazed by the attitude of the South Africans as we received undivided attention from most if not all of the students, they were much more eager to learn than many English students would have been. Over there, education is seen as a privilege rather than a right. At one school the lack of resources really showed as this school had no books whatsoever in its library. This came as a huge shock to the whole group. These students had very little but still worked as hard as they could for their education.
Our presentation was maybe the hardest to teach as it involved a lot of complex science. We had to vary the level at which we taught for each school. For example, at one school we were able to talk about the Doppler effect, however at another we kept it as simple as possible and got them drawing rainbows to represent the colours of visible light. We carried out several experiments; the most successful by far was with the UV beads. These are beads that become coloured when exposed to UV light. The South African students got so excited when this happened and were filled with questions.
In addition to asking question about the spectrum, many of the students were very interested in asking questions about England , and were more often than not amazed by the answers. One of the funnier ones was when they asked about the English weather. The differences in weather were very apparent because, even though it was the winter in South Africa, most of us were in t-shirts and shorts as it was like British Summer weather to us. Most of the South Africans where wearing coats.
While we where in Sutherland we got the chance to do some brilliant observing, the sky was incredibly clear especially when we moved away from the town. We were able to see much more than we can in England , I saw several constellations and was fortunate enough to see several shooting stars. When we went to SALT, I couldn’t believe how huge. It was very interesting listening to the scientists and astronomers that were working at salt as they explained various things about it such as, how it moved around and tracked objects across the sky and which parts of the spectrum it could see in. It was also great to be able to see one of SALT first test images.
We also did several recreational activities such as on the first day we went up Table Mountain , the view from the top was just breathtaking. We also went to a cheetah park where we got to go in with the young cheetahs which was really cool. Also one night we went to the cinema to see war of the world, I was surprised when I found out it was the first time the South African students we were working with had been to the cinema.
Once again I just want to thank everyone involved for making this such a great trip.
