Technology Grade 9 Term 2 Question Paper Apr 2026

Later, walking out of the classroom into the winter afternoon, Thabo saw a construction crane across the street. For a moment, he didn’t just see a machine. He saw hydraulic rams extending, gear trains turning, counterweights balancing, and a truss-like jib transferring loads. The question paper was over. But the seeing—that had just begun.

She whispered, “Bottom chord: tension. Top chord: compression. Diagonals: depends on load direction. But you got the triangle part right, right?”

Thabo, sitting in the third row, stared at the cover sheet as if it were a cryptic puzzle. He had studied. Sort of. He had watched three YouTube videos on gears the night before and had even drawn a pulley system in the margins of his notebook. But now, with the clock ticking toward the invigilator’s command to “turn over your papers,” his mind felt like a clogged drainage pipe—slow and likely to overflow with the wrong things.

The room exhaled. Papers were collected. Thabo leaned over to Lerato. “What did you put for the tension-compression thing?” technology grade 9 term 2 question paper

was a mixture of short answers and diagrams. Question 2 showed a cross-section of a simple hydraulic press with two cylinders—a small master cylinder and a larger slave cylinder. The diagram was unlabeled, and the question read: “Identify parts A, B, and C and explain how force is multiplied in this system.”

“Mostly,” Thabo said, grinning.

Thabo, meanwhile, was stuck on . There was a diagram of a roof truss—a complex web of triangles. Question 9 read: “Identify which members are in tension and which are in compression. Explain why triangles are used in trusses.” Later, walking out of the classroom into the

Across the room, his friend Lerato was already on . This section described a real-world scenario:

“You may begin,” Ms. Dlamini said, her voice calm but firm.

Ms. Dlamini, walking between rows, glanced at Lerato’s paper and smiled ever so slightly. The question paper was over

But then came the diagram drawing. Question 4 asked: “Draw a simple gear train with three gears. Show the direction of rotation for each gear using arrows. Label the driver and the idler.”

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.”

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.”