Tamil Nadu - Tiruchi   

Move to promote scientific temper among students

TIRUCHI: Encouraged by its maiden effort in motivating school pupils of Standards IX and X of a Government High School in Madivala in Bangalore to develop an aptitude towards science, the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, will shortly organise a couple of programmes at the school.

The topic of the projects would be ‘Measurement of Angles’ and ‘Heights and distances in Trigonometry.’ Students would conduct experiments on their own, record the observations in these two topics and arrive at a scientific conclusion. The Institute’s initial effort through a project on ‘Discover the laws of pendulum’ evoked an overwhelming response from the students of the school, said the Professor of the Institute, S. Chatterjee. Hence, two more projects were sanctioned for the school.

In an interview to The Hindu here recently, Dr. Chatterjee said that the projects formed part of the ‘Public Outreach Campaign’ aimed at sensitising the masses to the scientific rationality, so that the people, particularly the youth would be motivated to understand the salient features of science, he said.

As part of observance of “International Year of Astronomy,” declared by the United Nations to mark the 400-th anniversary of the study of the space using telescope by Galileo, the Institute would also organise 100 lecture programmes in several parts of the country on astronomy; the impact of astronomy on human thought. So far, 40 lectures had been conducted in various parts of the country.

The Institute has also been conducting an awareness campaign to sensitise the masses on the scientific rationality of solar eclipse, in the wake of the one which falls on July 22.

To mitigate certain myths about the solar eclipse, the Institute would explain the relationship between the sun and the earth.

Mass watching of the sun with solar filters would be another feature.

The solar eclipse would be total in places such as Patna and Varnasi, he added.

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