Water, Sewage & Effluent September October 2018 | Page 37

that he was sitting in the presence of
a lesser mind, so he quickly adds:
“It’s pretty simple actually,” which
doesn’t make me feel any better
about myself.
But it’s not about me; it’s about the
amazing minds of our youth. Kwazi
is a prime example of how young,
flexible minds are leading the way;
how we ‘oldies’ can learn from them,
and how it is our obligation to support
them as they reach for the stars we
can now only dimly see. u  
*Two students from Singapore, Caleb
Liow Jia Le and Johnny Xiao Hong Yu,
won the 2018 Stockholm Junior Water
Prize for producing reduced graphene
oxide — a material that can be used
to purify water from agricultural waste
products.
Water Sewage & Effluent September/October 2018
35
innovations
Department of Water and Sanitation.
The water from air device was
inspired after noticing condensation
on the outside of a bottle that he’d
removed from the fridge, which made
him think that the atmosphere must
be full of water.
“There is a company in medicine
that estimates that there is about
140-quadrillion litres of water in the
atmosphere,” he says and adds,
“now there could be more than that,
as that is old information.” Of course
it is, I think to myself, making a mental
note to look this up ...
Kwazi goes into fine detail
explaining how the device works,
with semi-conductors and coils
and condensation and heat seals
and thermo energy coolers and
dissipation and … But my glazed
look must have alerted him to the fact
projects,” the young whizz kid shares.
After winning a Provincial Science
competition and then the National
one as well, Kwazi’s water project
started drawing attention. He quickly
adds, lest I am not sufficiently
impressed and my stunned face
appears impassive: “Oh and this year
I made a breath analyser system for
a car, so when the driver is drunk, the
car won’t start … and I also designed
an ultrasonic sensor system that
allows a car to park itself.” Really?
I briefly think back to my youth
and recall sitting in a Zimbabwean
tree at round about his age, eating
mazhanjes. Ah the youth, how they
have evolved …
Kwazi’s claim to fame is his project
‘Rainmaker’, a machine that converts
air to water, which he initially entered
in a science competition run by the
Kwazi’s invention, full of coils and semi-conductors and and and …