9 April 2016, UCT New Engineering Building.

April 9, 2016 saw the running of the inaugural SAICE Aqualibrium Water Competition hosted by UCT’s Civil Engineering Department. The competition saw seventeen teams of three high school students battle it out for the honor of being the Western Cape regional champion and become the Western Cape’s representative at the National Competition in Johannesburg later this year. This year’s competition saw a number of schools participating for the first time including Swartland High School as well as Somerset College. A first for this year’s competition, was also the trial of a number of new rules including setting goal volumes in each reservoir other than 1000ml each, and trialing a new judging procedure which made use of scales to measure water volumes in each reservoir.

After some introduction to pipe networks and mechanics of pipe flow from the organizers, the teams commenced with the one hour challenge of constructing their model networks. After much trial and error, as well as wet clothes and dropped buckets, teams were given a final opportunity to prime their systems with exactly 3 liters of water and ready themselves for judging. While the team of expert judges were making their way around the room, students had the opportunity to tour the civil engineering laboratory, learning more about Civil Engineering as well as the research currently being undertaken at UCT. As an additional challenge for the day, students were also tasked with building an egg protection device that would keep an egg safe from impact after freefall. They were also asked to rate their confidence in their design by choosing a height from which they believed their device would be successful, when dropped. After a very messy testing session – the design of DF Malan High School was determined the best device to safely protect an egg after safely delivering their payload from a colossal height of 5.5m.
After a lunch break SAICE Branch Representative and Professional Engineer, Geoff du Toit spoke on the increasing need of young engineers in South Africa. Immediately following this, the results and prizes were presented to the top three teams as well as some well-deserved spirit prizes. We are proud to wish our victors - on their first appearance at the competition - Swartland High School, every success as they represent the Western Cape at the 2016 National Competition, and hope they can improve on their brilliant score of 79 penalty points. Congratulations should also go to both of Brackenfell High School’s teams who placed 2nd and 3rd. On behalf of the SAICE Western Cape branch committee, we thank each and every school for their participation and wish all the students well for their future.