The room exhaled. Papers were collected. Thabo leaned over to Lerato. “What did you put for the tension-compression thing?”
“Mostly,” Thabo said, grinning.
“You may begin,” Ms. Dlamini said, her voice calm but firm.
He was proud of that. It was almost word-for-word from the textbook.
Thabo’s pencil trembled. He could see the gears in his head—turning, meshing, reversing direction. But his hands produced something that looked like three lumpy circles with teeth that resembled a child’s drawing of a sawblade. He added arrows: driver clockwise, idler anticlockwise, last gear clockwise. He hoped Ms. Dlamini would have mercy.
The rustle of pages turning was like a sudden wind through a dry forest. Thabo flipped to . His eyes landed on Question 1.1:
Below that, in smaller print: “This question paper consists of 12 pages. Please check that your paper is complete.”
The final section, , was a wildcard. It showed a photograph of a broken wheelbarrow—one wooden handle cracked, the wheel bent, the tray rusted. The question: “List five improvements you would make to this wheelbarrow using modern materials and mechanisms. Justify each improvement.”
“Time’s up. Pens down,” Ms. Dlamini announced.
Thabo knew this was the core of the term’s work. He remembered Ms. Dlamini’s demonstration with two syringes and a tube of water. Push the small syringe, the larger one moved with more force but less distance. He scribbled: “A is the master piston. B is the slave piston. C is the hydraulic fluid (oil or water). Force is multiplied because pressure is the same in both cylinders, but force = pressure × area. Bigger area = bigger force.”
“A small rural clinic needs a device to lift a 50 kg water tank from ground level to a platform 1.5 meters high. The clinic has no electricity. The device must be simple, safe, and built from locally available materials.”
TERM 2 EXAMINATION MARKS: 100 TIME: 3 HOURS
