Category: Personal

  • Western India Science Fair 2010

    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 :).

  • Back from a Break…

    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.

  • The newspapers of today

    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.

  • Water

    My fascination for water started with the lines in my science text
    book urging me to drink 8 to 13 glasses of water everyday. I follow
    this naturally because I do get thirsty alot.

    Fast forward to my under graduate years and it amazes me that we still
    use the same 100 odd year old system to bring water from catchment
    areas to meet requirements of the city. Innovation has worked only in
    bringing water more efficiently in the old system.

    Today, we face a water shortage. Would not people staying closer to
    the water source claim ownership and sell water to her neighbours than
    allow its citizens to die?

    An analogy is supplying water to a colony on the Moon.

  • Hello World!

    I find that I blog little and little and so this sounded something worth looking at. This is my first test post. You can follow the updates on http://pradx.posterous.com. Thanks.

  • What next after SEDS?

    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 🙂

  • Spring Cleaning

    Crazy February had a major victim – me. So, I set myself the target of balancing and re-hashing all my priorities in time for the Summer Solstice this month. I am happy to report that I have achieved that goal. You can now also see the content uploaded on the main webpages of my website, which have gone live – well ahead of the scheduled September 26, 2009 release. 

    With the new system updated successfully and everything working perfectly, I can now come back into the blogosphere. Thanks for hanging around.

  • Games children play

    This content originally appeared on https://pradx.org/blog. Recovered using the WayBack Machine from here.

    [These are random posts that I write, occassionally to please myself and occassionally to please others]

    This was inspired by the way kids collect on the play ground and what they play today compared to the games that I played in my child hood.

    Collecting the kids to play the game is as important as playing itself. It is a place where a group of kids build their social networks with a friend’s family. It is also a place where kids first face prejudice, understand to accept differences in stature or wealth and also gain a wealth of experience in team building and management.

    As a kid, I remember walking around the colony straining our vocal chords and calling mates, interacting with parents who make excuses, learn to negotiate your play times, learn a few things about saving money.

    Your resourcefulness is tested in the way you organise the games – according to number of kids, weather conditions, apparatus available, availability of grounds etc.

    The games itself were physically stimulating and mentally challenging.

    Today kids call each other over the phone, play with much more severe limitations like coaching classes, extra curricular activities etc. They are physically exhausted at the end of play time and it almost turns into a chore rather than being a time of conscious relaxation and sub-conscious learning.

  • An Opportunity to spread Renewable Energy

    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!

  • Purpose of life

    This blog post was originally posted on https://pradx.org/blog and was retrieved from the Wayback Machine here.

    The purpose of my life is to harmonise Man and Nature.

    Well, said like that it sounds pretty lame, eh? But, believe me or not, that statement took 5.5 years to put together. This is a pretty long post and if you want to miss it, feel free to. You would not be missing anything huge. Just some personal stuff.

    I think writing this without a full fledged 5.5 year explanation would be leaving it in the air for the reader. So, here it is. Have a pitcher of water by all means. Settle down and start reading.

    I was 18 when I started what can be called “The Pradx Project” with the aim of making me an athletic scholar. The name was inspired by the “Blair Witch Project”. The aim here was not to hunt down the Blair Witch, but to hunt down my inner most self and making it to do something – help me become an athletic scholar. 5.5 years down, I’m still fat and pretty a poor front benching student. 5.5 years down the line, one thing is pretty simple – The Pradx Project isn’t successful. There was one part of the project that worked pretty well – reading and writing. The writing section spewed many of the blog posts you read here (now you know why it’s pradx). The reading section was also a great trip starting out with Wodehouse and ending up with some pretty strong stuff.

    Take a sip, relax.

    Basically, Pradx Project was a self improvement project started by a simple half witted 18 year old. It did some cool things to me that I’m still committed to – reading, writing, SEDS, environment and education. But it ended up doing everything except improving me. The reason for this came to me like it always does during exams in December, 2008 – procrastination. In February 2009, I still have not gotten rid of that demon – procrastination. But, I’ve got lots of stuff in my brain (material) that I can now use in a variety of ways to help me and that way I think the 5.5 years is well spent.

    I’m giving you some hope now. Relax. Want to take a sip?

    Mom started me on this first. Push. Without starting there is nothing to work on. So, I started to get some very little work done from a sense of total procrastination. If you understand mechanical engineering, this was friction to the motion of the car of procrastination. The breaks have not been applied yet – the foot is going there towards the pedal. Reading and writing were the first agents that provided this friction from a sense of total procrastination. And perhaps, college. So, things look pretty gloomy right now, yeah? Well, its pretty hard to increase this friction without taking the foot and applying the brakes on procrastination and getting to work. This happened in a simple Tweet that Kirk sent me – (to paraphrase) no system would teach you discipline.

    Now, drink a long gulp, the next paragraph is going to get long…

    Discipline is a sore thumb for me. Krishnamurti and Osho got me worked up on how discipline was wreaking havoc on life. That thought process got on far enough to make me believe that discipline was a bad guy. But, then slowly I began to look at discipline that was being talked about in these lines and realised that they made more sense on external discipline – applied by some external agent (parents, peers, systems, God etc) and not a sense of internal discipline and planning that comes from within. Look at that internal discipline which gets automatically applied in any situation that helps you think it out, relax etc and you see that discipline was not such a bad nut you made him out to be after all. In fact, this ounce of discipline if applied at the beginning of the 5.5 years would have probably changed the 5.5 years entirely. Wow, cool discovery. Nudge it a little more and I found that this system (as spoken of in Zen etc) was already existent in me and I only had to be more aware of it and it automatically adjusted and worked for me. As Ray Bradbury puts it, you only have to get out of the way. Everyone was getting along really well until the I came in between.

    Phew. Now, with all of that out of the way let’s get back to the Purpose of Life statement. Yeah, its only starting now.

    This whole decade has been one of slowly rising environmental awareness. We’re looking at Nature and acknowledging that we’re not being fair on the Man-Nature relationships. We ought to give more to Nature than we’re taking from it. On the other hand, we’re also constantly improving Man to make him more biologically strong to work on the scarce environment. Hence, we’re working on both Man and Nature and the relationship is created by Engineering. If you have a trouble with that statement, sorry I’m not ready to debate it cause I already spent nearly five years on it and I’m moving on. Spend 5 years and think about it.

    The harmonisation of Man-Nature relationship helps me to be fit, to be athletic, to be studious, to be funny, to be a good parent (I’m not yet married – darn I don’t even have a girlfriend yet – applications invitedfor the post of girlfriend), to be a scientist, to be a researcher or even to be a sportsperson. Again, think about it for 5 hours before commenting – I took 5.5 years. The idea is to optimise both Man and Nature as much as possible and when it reaches its optimum to jump to the next planet.

    Outer Space provides this huge laboratory to check out Nature which you can look at through a microscope or through a telescope. Since, I really can’t stand up to long names, I prefer to look through telescopes than microscopes. Does that explain my interest in astronomy. A new love is radio astronomy where I hear the heartbeat of the Universe (a whole new world!). So, that’s how I’m checking out Nature.

    Energy is a simple and temporary hack for minimising the use of resources created for us by Nature. Think about it.

    Primary Education is a way to work on the Man. It’s the best place to work on the future batch of Man-Nature harmonisers, isn’t it?