S.J.C. student wins BECOL competition
The Belize Electricity Company Limited’s science competition really got students involved in hands-on research. The competition ended today with an awards ceremony at the Bliss, but if you are thinking, oh no, another display of exploding volcanoes and electric lightbulbs, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. The students were much more original doing everything from making paper from banana leaves to testing antibacterial soaps. Hyacinth Latchman has the story.
Three judges had a very difficult task choosing a winner for the first ever BECOL Secondary Schools Science competition which had the participation of twenty-four students from eight high schools. But finally a winner was announced: a second year student of St. John’s College Corrie Chang was chosen for his experiment on the “The Healing effects of Ginger”. For his project he tested solutions of ginger and water, ginger and lime and ginger and alcohol on mosquito bites to see if the swelling and sting would be alleviated. The ginger and alcohol proved to be the best remedy.
Corrie Chang, Winner of Competition
“For my investigation I used the ginger as the main topic. I use the ginger to find out if ginger can be use to heal mosquito bites. Ginger has a lot of uses like healing cold and stomach pains.”
Chang and the school he represented each received fully loaded computers. The science teacher who helped the students of S.J.C. put their science exhibition together Noemi Waight, received five hundred dollars cash for her efforts. Waight told us more about the projects.
Noemi Waight, Science Teacher, S.J.C.
“We started working during the summer. The whole project, the whole investigation was an idea from the students. They came up with everything. They worked on this project more on their own. I basically was a guide to direct them and give them ideas, help them out with the written report. But I must commend the students. I must congratulate Corrie because he did all this on his own and I think it’s been a great effort.”
The second place winner Gian Cho from Belmopan Comprehensive School received a five hundred dollar gift certificate from the Angelus Press for developing a variety of bricks which were all baked for over six hours. The competition was held under the theme, “Science education equals development of a nation”.
Hyacinth Latchman for News Five.
Judges for the BECOL competition were the local registrar for the Caribbean Examinations Council, Nora Bradley, Agricultural Scientist for Central Farm Lisandro Quiros and Jude Lizama, Science Coordinator at St. Catherine’s Academy, which did not participate this year. BECOL distributed science guide books to the participating schools earlier this year to assist them in developing ideas and methods for their experiments.
