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Energetic ideas generate awards

Joyce Law

Salesian English School was the biggest winner at this year's Joint School Science Exhibition (JSSE), scooping a total of six awards - including the Overall Award - with their energy-saving device.

This year, 23 out of 54 local secondary schools entered the final round of this science competition for Sixth Formers.

The theme of this year's JSSE is City Charm, which aims to encourage students to pay more attention to their surroundings. The event, into its 36th year, is sponsored by Philips.

The winning team explored the charm of the city in a environmentally friendly way by inventing an Energy-transformation Railway System, which transforms wasted energy into useful electrical energy.

'The idea came to us as we took the MTR. We found that there were a lot of problems. For example, it's noisy. So we tried to find ways to convert this wasted sound energy into useful electrical energy,' said Ian Cheng Tat-pong, the team member, who is also the winner of the best project holder award.

However, success did not come easy, and there were also times when they were frustrated.

'Once there were four visitors who asked a lot of questions and challenged our idea. Although we were well-prepared for this, it wavered our confidence ,' said team member Bosco Yung Hong-kiu, who was also the winner of the best demonstrator award.

'Luckily, we regained confidence as soon as we realised that they were asking questions because they were interested in our exhibits.'

Despite their successes, they boys may not choose to further their careers in the science field.

'I may choose to study business in university instead because the space for science to develop is very limited in Hong Kong. Somehow, career is more important,' said Tat-pong.

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