What started out as a practical for grade ten pupil Wesley Gush has evolved into a raft of opportunites that has taken him from Grahamstown to Budapest. Gush, currently in Grade 11 at Kingswood College, represented South Africa at the European Expo for Young Scientists in July.
What started out as a practical for grade ten pupil Wesley Gush has evolved into a raft of opportunites that has taken him from Grahamstown to Budapest. Gush, currently in Grade 11 at Kingswood College, represented South Africa at the European Expo for Young Scientists in July.
"We had to do a practical project for Biology. The projects with the highest marks went through to the regional science expo held at Rhodes. Six projects were chosen to go to nationals from there," says Gush.
After being awarded a silver at both the regional and national Science Expo in 2007, his project was chosen as one of 25 from around the country to represent South Africa at various international science expositions this year.
Gush joined two international volunteers at the Amakhala Private Game Reserve where they studied the adaption behaviour of a recently introduced male cheetah named Lightfoot.
Cheetahs typically hunt in savannah-veld, since this is where their trademark speed is best utilised. Lighfoot, however, seemed to challenge this norm."He seemed to be spending a lot of his time on the edge of the reserve and was having remarkable success hunting in bushy areas," says Gush.
From his own observations, and those recorded by the two volunteers, his project concluded that cheetahs are more capable of adapting to a bushier environment than what was previously known. Similar research is also being done in the Kruger National Park.
Gush says that his project was one of very few Environmental Science related projects at the expo in Hungary. He says that the projects ranged from finding new ways of nuclear power, HIV/AIDS to highly-complicated mathematics and science experiments.
The highlight of the expo for Gush was to experience the dynamics of a historic city like Budapest and meeting like-minded people from all over the world. He also says that he feels an opportunity like this would open doors for him in the future and might lead him to study Environmental Science.
