May 16, 2008

Water for the World

Vidush Mukund and Abhijit Puranam, both residents of Evergreen, along with their teammates Asliwin Sundar and Anirudh Ramchandran participated in the 21st Annual Tech Challenge 2008 - Water Works conducted by the San Jose Tech Museum on May 3.

Their team, Vataka (Sanskrit word meaning waterwheel), won the award for best documentation in the high school category of the competition and received a cash price of $200. Seventy teams from all around the Bay Area took part in the high school division of the Tech Challenge.

Villages in Kenya and other parts of Africa are not near a source of water and hence do not have an ample supply of water. This year's challenge was to solve this problem with a device that moved water uphill to the villages. The challenge was to move water five feet up to a container by only using the power of the running water in a flume below and devices that they had created to move the water. Team Vataka solved this problem with their model of a wirtz pump.

Using a wirtz pump, made from two coils of pipe, combined with a paddle wheel, team Vataka successfully moved 0.7 gallons of water, in three minutes, five feet up to the designated container. Vataka won the best-documented project award because of their neat science journals, informative display board, specific dimensions for future devices and eye-catching brochure.