Students of Government
Technical College, Ewet, Uyo, in Akwa Ibom State, have once again proven that
they are truly engineers in the making. They emerged overall winners in the NTA
ETV National Children’s Arts and Science Expo 2019, held in Abuja from October
20 to 24 with the Hydro and Power Control System, which they designed and
constructed in their school, and took to the competition.
Earlier,
the school had taken the first position in the state selection exercise
organised by the NTA in Uyo, which paved the way for their participation at the
Abuja exhibition. The school has in its effort to develop science and
technological skills in the students helped them to form what they call
Explorers Company, in the school. The company aims at solving many human,
social, health and educational problems of society, using electronic,
electrical, scientific and technological ideas.
The
Explorers Company has in the past designed and created a number of products and
put them in the market and exhibited some at different shows. Among them are
Explorers lamps – used for charging lamps; mosquito repellants – to check the
spread of mosquitoes and water level controller; all of which they exhibited at
a recent Junior Achievements Nigeria show in Lagos and took the fifth position.
They plan to exhibit their products and present papers at a national conference
of Nigerian Society of Engineers.
The integrated system may soon become the desire of every home and office for
its offering of several solutions in the areas of water supply and power
switching from different sources of water supply. Before the invention, the
students had noticed that water pumped to the reservoir in their school
overflowed, with the water direction causing erosion, water wastage and
excessive burning of fuel or consumption of power while the reservoir itself
was rusting. This made them decide to create a system that could fix the
problems.
Thereafter,
the students designed and constructed an automatic water level controller – a
device that could detect and control the level of water in a water tank or a
similar water storage system. Their invention was amazing! The devise senses
the level of water that is available in the tank through the detector level.
It
will then adjust the state of the water pump in accordance with the water level
information, achieving automation through sequential logic attained by a
flip-flop. The electronic design has a LED indicator and a relay-based motor
pump driving circuit. During demonstrations, the students would showcase the
system which pumps automatically and turns on when the tank is empty (green LED
indicator turns on during this process.) But when the tank is full, it turns
off the pump (the blue LED indicator turns on). When the devise was showcased
at the Uyo competition, it beat the inventions of other schools and groups. It
was the celebration of their work at Uyo that encouraged the students to
improve upon the quality and attributes of the automatic power controller to
include automatic power change-over and automatic starter circuit.
Their
success at this invention prompted them to carry out the design and
construction of an automatic power changeover switch. The switch helps in
changing automatically the source of power supply at the home, eatery, business
centre or office. “With this device, there will not be any need for manual
change-over.
This
means that whenever there is power outage in any electrical appliances, the
device will automatically switch over to a standby supply without causing any
noticeable distortion”, explains Master Peter Isidore Bassey, the student CEO
of Explorers Company, who was at the Abuja exhibition with his colleagues –
Sampson Sam Sampson, Ndiana Christopher Sunday and Rutherford Edet Ekop, all
vice presidents of the company. Volunteer teacher, Mrs. Joyce Emmanuel Manoah,
who accompanied them to the Abuja event and school principal, Dr. Udo Etukudo
David, were full of gratitude to the students for their proud representation of
their school.
The
school has been celebrating the students ever since. Manoah said of the
students’ feat “They (students) have been able to translate information into
something that could be seen, thereby activating disruptors.” It was learnt
that various organisations including NTA Uyo have been celebrating the students
since their return from the Abuja exhibition.
But
GTC, Ewet, Uyo, is not new to winning trophies. In 2015, they won one as the
first runner-up for a choreography performance on Governor Udom Emmanuel’s
Dakkada slogan. In 2016, during the 40th anniversary of National Council of
Arts and Culture, the school won the first position prize for its art and
sculptor presentation.
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