A month ago, MA Aravind, co-founder of the city-based Infinite Engineers, decided that he would make his first international flight in two weeks. It was to Harare, Zimbabwe, where he taught applied science to children of the city — including the granddaughter of former President Robert Mugabe — in collaboration with the Zimbabwe Science Fair. This is the third country that Infinite Engineers is teaching in, after Singapore and India.
The four-year old education startup goes around the State distributing their science kit — the Dexter Box — to both Government and private schools and training teachers in its use, hoping to bring applied science to classrooms. “Most schools allow students to use laboratories only after class IX. There too, we see that the environment is restrictive: ‘Be careful, otherwise you’ll break something.’ So there’s no room for children to experiment, just rote learning,” explains Harish Srinivasan, another co-founder. The group also interacts with children, holding workshops to motivate innovation. The company has made good use of Facebook to market their skills: it was how the founder of the Zimbabwe Science Fair got in touch with them this year, and it was how the Tamil Nadu Government learnt about them back in 2015. “We approached 100 schools in 2014, and only six of them allowed us to hold workshops. Today, we are supplying to 320 Government schools, 10 from each district,” says co-founder MC Jaikanth. The group also collaborates with the NUS High School of Mathematics and Science in Singapore.
Filmy start
Remember the famous scene from 3 Idiots when Raju, Farhan and Rancho are caught napping in class and asked to explain how an induction motor starts? Jaikanth had a similar experience in his fourth year of mechanical engineering at the Rajalakshmi Engineering College, that led him to the founding of Infinite Engineers.
“My friend and I were cutting class and trying to avoid being seen by faculty. We randomly slunk into the back-bench of a seminar hall which was holding a conference competition. When the professor there caught us anyway, we lied saying that we were there to give a presentation too,” says Kanth. However, unlike Raju’s hilarious sputter start take from 3 Idiots , Jaikanth not only managed to give a presentation on the project he was working on — bladeless wind turbines — but also won.
“It was a turning point for an average student like me. I realised that I had the potential for innovation,” adds Jaikanth, who then started working on several projects. Later in 2014, on his Head of Department’s advice, he got his batchmates Aravind and Srinivasan on board to start holding science workshops for school children. “We see a lot of dropouts in engineering, because school students tend to take up this specialisation blindly, without understanding what kind of study it would entail. So we thought we could increase awareness and interest through our kits.”
Looking ahead
Infinite Engineers is gearing up for Round Two of Harare in August, where it will be teaching children how to design products. “We met a few bright kids who had ideas for how to improve the collective health conditions in poorer areas of the city. One 10-year-old girl came up with a cheaper design for sanitary napkins that would make them more accessible,” recalls Aravind, who still mentors the children through Facebook.
From June, the group will also be turning 17 activity centers in the city into ‘Dexter Zones’ for children to conduct experiments using their science kits twice a week, and learning how to dismantle and put together daily-use machines, among other things.
For Srinivasan, children are the be-all-and-end-all for this initiative. “Working with children is the most rewarding experience. Every time I teach them, I feel like I have learnt something new,” he says. “Even when we make education policies, children are never consulted. We give them a lot less credit than they are due,” he adds, recalling how a 11-year-old girl surprised him by figuring out how the time period of a simple pendulum varies with its length — a concept taught in Class XII — all by herself. “She said it was the first time she was made to think like a scientist.” Agrees Aravind, “Be they from India or from Zimbabwe, children have bright minds full of ideas, all they need is the room to tinker around.”
Log on to www.infiniteengineers.in or call 9884190950 for more details.
