SUPER SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS FAIR 2018, KOBE, JAPAN

On the 7th August, Muskaan Betala and Anya Gupta, accompanied by Mrs. Jitixa Shah went to Kobe, Japan for the Super Science High School Students Science Fair, 2018 which was hosted by the Japan Science and Technology Agency. There were 26 international schools and 209 Japanese Super Science High Schools (SSH) participating in the fair.

• On the first day, 8th August, we went to The Kobe International Convention Centre where we were given the chance to interact with students from other countries. Among the participating countries were U.S.A, Germany, Jordan, China, Chinese Taipei, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Korea, India and Japan.
• On the second day, following the opening ceremony, we were given an interesting talk by the renowned mathematician Jin Akiyama on hinge – transformable pairs. After that the poster session took place during which we were given the opportunity to present our idea through our posters as well as see projects done by other international schools. Our project, which was related to environmental engineering, was a detailed analysis on net zero energy houses and their ability to reduce household energy consumption. Other projects included biodegradation of ocean waste and plastic by genetic engineering of E.coli, smart mushroom gardening, perception of sound by autistic people etc.
• On the third day, we listened to the oral presentations given by six selected SSH schools which were extremely intriguing after which the closing ceremony took place.
• The next day, we were taken for an excursion to the Hyogo Prefectural Kokogawa High School, where we interacted with Japanese students and learnt about the resistance of building structures to earthquakes. We also visited the Himeji castle, where we were able to see the practical aspect of aseismic building structures.

It was overall an extremely enriching experience as we got to see different ideas and projects, while at the same time getting to interact with students from different cultures world-wide. This fair gave us a whole new perspective on the field of science. We saw the projects on Earth-science, Life-Science and Agriculture-science…which we would not have been exposed to otherwise.

-Muskaan Betala and Anya Gupta

(XI-B)