It was a memorable Saturday for the students of Corporation and Panchayat Union Schools who attended the ‘Thulir Children's Science Mela.'
The American College was kept open for school students coming from rural background to make them feel the college campus life and know what science is all about.
Over 250 school students from Madurai, Theni and Dindigul districts attended the two-day ‘science mela' on July 10 and 11, organised jointly by Thulir Science Centre in association with American College/ Tamil Nadu Science Forum (TNSF).
To encourage 6th to 8th standard students of Corporation and rural schools towards science, special sessions were being organised focusing on making the children ‘understand the new frontiers of science' in a manner that will be easy for them to comprehend.
Exposure
“You are all school children who got an opportunity to spend two days on our college campus. This mela gives you exposure to science, experiments and college campus,” said T. Chinnaraj Joseph Jaikumar, Principal, American College, while addressing the school children.
Activity-based science programmes blended with experiments, demonstration, songs and games were arranged for the participating students. Apart from having ‘Meet the Scientist' programme, the science mela also had a Bio-walk inside the American College campus on July 11 to commemorate the International Year of Biodiversity.
Students showed a mix of science and innocence in the inaugural session itself. For instance, when the college Principal Dr.Jaikumar asked the reason why more scientists are not coming from India, a child responded b saying ‘the reason is watching television.'
While explaining the objectives of the science mela, P. Rajamanickam of TNSF said that students would get attracted to science through events marked with ‘aattam, paattam and kondaatam.'
D.Indumathi of Institute of Mathematical Sciences-Chennai, G. Vasudevan of Fortune Pandian Hotels, S. Krishnaswamy of Madura Kamaraj University and C.V.Chidambaram of Hi-Tech Arai Ltd spoke at the inaugural session.
On Sunday, senior faculty members from the MKU interacted with students on topics such as biodiversity, biotechnology, climate change and Neutrino (India-based Neutrino Observatory project proposed to be established in Theni district at a cost of Rs.960 crore.)
American College faculty P. Kumarasamy in his welcome address enthused school children by saying that they got a chance to spend time in illustrious American College which had distinguished visitors like Rabindranath Tagore, C.N. Annadurai, MGR and M.Karunanidhi.
