Category: Personal

Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on December 16, 2010 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

The better part of today morning and early afternoon was spent at the Nehru Science Centre, Worli attending the Western India Science Fair. Now, in its 23rd edition, the fair has been conducted every year in Mumbai. This is one of the few opportunities that students do get to show off their talent in hands-on projects. As for the student projects, I saw that students have picked up on themes relevant to today – anti-terrorism, renewable energy, waste management and agriculture.

The guests did walk into the hall a full 40 minutes late. The inauguration began with an opening by Anil Manekar. He spoke about the Fair being a great platform for students to showcase their creativity and also learn the important task of science communication, by communicating their theoretical and practical understanding of science to the visiting members of the public. This, he stressed was vital and was the need of the hour.

We then learnt that the 2009 edition of the fair saw 120 thousand visitors to the Fair.

The Chief Guest of the evening [thanks to Srinivas for correcting me] was Dr. H C Pradhan of the Homi Bhaba Centre for Science Education. I have made his acquaintance as a higher secondary student when I wrote the Physics Olympiad. I visited his offices (he was Assistant Director then) on the recommendation of my late Professor Prasad Iyer (in Mathematics) of Atomic Energy Junior College. He was really helpful at that time and he is still as humble and soft spoken today. He shared with students who he said were “really good with their hands” avenues such as the Olympiads and the Intel Fair. For the teachers in the audience, he also went into some detail on teaching and its modern forms. He said that project based learning was now believed to be better than Teacher based learning. He said that learning and hence the student had become more important than teaching and hence the teacher’s job was now to provide more opportunities to the student for learning. He told them that the next step is likely to be peer-to-peer learning. He urged the participants to go home and share their experiences with fellow students in their schools and in their neighborhoods.

Of all the student projects that I witnessed, I enjoyed one on rain water harvesting, one on testing water for fecal contamination using a Rs. 24 Hydrogen Sulphide strip, one on aqua robotic reconnaissance system (based partly on 26/11 terrorist strikes), one on Maglev trains (the fascinating thing about this was that they used their Nokia mobile phone battery to power the model 🙂 ), one on robotic excavation system (based on recent news of the Chile miners), an elaborate satellite-assisted coastal monitoring system (based on 26/11 terrorist strike), a system for converting plastic waste to useful substances like wax, fuel etc.

There was even a section for educators on some of the interesting ways they taught to science to students. Didn’t spend much time here as I was hungry :).

Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on December 02, 2010 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

I finished writing my only exam that I had to write today. This exam has been the source of many pains and also led me to miss many things including Dr. Maqbool’s talk which I had written about in these pages. This is just a heads-up saying I’m back and sharing a few random links to space articles that I missed in the past few days.

1. Dr. Syed Maqbool Ahmed’s talk – press report + Srinivas’ take on Dr. Ahmed’s day in Mumbai and his talk.

2. An ongoing Astronomy festival in Bengaluru with participation from ISRO. The festival runs till December 5, 2010. I have sadly not seen many post event blog reports yet.

3. Abhilash M from the ISRO Inertials Systems Unit writes on The Voyage Blog  on the World Space Week celebrations done by ISRO in Kerala.

4. Anantha Krishnan writes about India’s success in developing indigenously electro-hydraulic servo valves (ESHVs) which have aerospace applications. It was developed by a team at Centre for Aerospace Products, Hyderabad.

5. Srinivas also shared an aspect of Chandrayaan-I hitherto not well known. He shared information on how the Parkes Observatory was used to help Chandrayaan-I get data down to Earth 24×7.

6. This last week, ISRO-built satellite Hylas-1 for Astrium and Avanti, launched from Kourou. The ISRO Press releases on the launch and its subsequent placement in geostationary orbit. Also, Srinivas’ account is here.

With that, we now return to the normal scheduled programme. Coming over to the blog, you will find that it has been simplified even more.

I do not know where the newspapers get their paper from. I do not know
if restriction is set by the Government on the number of pages or
supplements that a newspaper may have.

With such restriction of my knowledge, I would like to submit that The
Times of India, one of the most voluminous papers today – it has other
than The Times of India, Bombay Times and Mumbai Mirror. the other
supplements change on a daily basis. A lay subscriber to the Times,
therefore has to run through nearly 100 pages of content and ads
everyday. Newspapers have long forgotten the art of summarization and
selection. Why waste manpower on summaries and news selection when
everything can be printed?

This also helps them serve more ads as they have more pages to serve them on.

In return of money thus generated, the reader just gets more content
and never better content, with extremely few exceptions. The money has
also not led to mainstreaming of the more controversial topics. So, in
the end, the only thing that has grown rich materially or
knowledge-wise is the management of the newspaper.

I have a certain degree of respect for The Indian Express. This is a
newspaper I would like to subscribe to when the decision falls on me.

Also, the very long analytical pieces are the domain of magazines.
Newspapers have invaded this domain and have destroyed both magazines
and analytical pieces. Newspapers do not and must not have space to
publish or stifle these. Newspapers must lead the people to these and
must play this role.

As I said in an earlier blog, my journey with SEDS has been great. As a student organisation, it does face some limits because of exams, the 3 to 4 year renewal cycle and several other things, but with enthusiastic students, everything’s easy to overcome. 

This question has been plaguing my mind – what next? It’s easy to say that I’ll have to set it aside till I graduate but this only makes it more difficult for me to concentrate on my studies. So, its best to get it out of the way once and for all by doing.

So, that’s what I’ll be doing over the next few days while copying my submission work 🙂

Today, students in the state of Maharashtra go in for their HSC exams. This is the higher secondary examination whose percentage along with the Common Entrance Test which plays a contribution to a student’s admission into a college of their choice. Newspapers reported that many of the students would have to face trouble because the examination centres at many of the places reportedly don’t have electricity because of the deficit that the state of Maharashtra faced.

While it is easy to sit down and criticise the Government for the lack of planning and implementation of its energy programme, it’s the case of no use of crying over spilt milk. It is now essential to look at stop gap solutions in the interim so that students don’t face trouble and do not curse everyone for their failed future.

I see a possible role for new and renewable energy sources here – one that will also have a long term impact on the next generation of Indians that would probably take India faster on the Renewable Energy track. With a little bit of initiative, schools could have easily collaborated with government agencies like IREDA or MEDA and corporates like Suzlon to install on campus solar or wind energy systems which deliver sufficient power to run fans in school compounds. Better school design would have assured proper ventilation and natural light for writing purposes. Even if that is not possible, meeting the lighting and cooling requirements of a school could easily have been met by a small renewable energy plant. 

This not only would fix the problem for students but would also be a problem that the Government can solve with a longer term solution than with short term fixes. Corporate houses can easily benefit in terms of CSR as well as recognition among students who can spread the word on their work much faster than any ad or PR agency. This will also spread word on programmes and financing made available by IREDA and MEDA.  Also, just think about how dedicated students will be towards renewable energy which helped them write their exam like any other centre in the State. Since this is a win/win for all concerned, I do not understand why this hasn’t been implemented in schools and colleges. Hopefully it will be – next year if not this year!