A World Of Wonder

This engineer is building apps to get kids as excited about science and maths as he is

- Nasifa Sulaiman

IMAGINE being able to see a human heart just by aiming your smartphone camera at a T-shirt. Or being able to dissect the vital organ by aiming your phone camera at a wooden cube, seeing the same kind of detail scientists would see in a lab.

You might also be interested in seeing sea animals, discovering more about Mars, or delving into the anatomy of the ear. It’s possible to see all of this and more using your smartphone, a few apps, a cube, and a specialized T-shirt thanks to the brainchild of Free State electrical engineer Mbangiso Mabaso.

The 29-year-old and his business partner, Thabo Segota, an AR developer, want to make science lessons as hands-on as possible – especially for kids in rural or under-resourced areas.

They realized that exposure to scientific experiments usually happens only at the university level.

“Three out of five learners define maths and science as difficult subjects, so they end up not choosing careers in these fields,” Mbangiso says. “This has a negative effect on the national GDP in the long run because it’s projected that [in coming years] there’ll be millions of jobs in STEM fields.”

They want to make STEM – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – subjects interesting and interactive, he says.

When he was at school in Botshabelo in the Free State, where he still lives, Mbangiso was given the assignment to write about a scientist he knew.

“I came home and I asked my mom, Disebo Mabaso, ‘Who do I write about?’, and my mom said, ‘I would assume your dad, as he is actually one’,” he recalls.