It was a platform for high school children to spare a thought or two for social problems and how to tackle them. The two-day International Children’s Science and Mathematics Festival organised by Sri Prakash Vidyaniketan at the VMRDA Children’s Arena buzzed with ideas as 270 students presented around 100 science projects on various topics. Many of these students had travelled from afar and from other countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, South Africa, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka.
“Our aim is to reduce deaths due to human negligence using technology,” said Ritvik Mukherjee and Rohan Jena from Bhubaneswar. They presented ‘Notification Oxy Meter’ which was made using Arduino, an open-source computing platform to build projects. It sends mobile notifications to the hospital staff and family members about the patient’s vital signs as well as the level of oxygen in the cylinder. The tragic deaths of children at a hospital in Gorakhpur led them to develop this metre.
Bibi Aisha and Riti Harpal from South Africa shared their experiment that measured nickel content in onions, potatoes and carrots. Bibi explained how in the process of their research and experiments they learnt that the greens of the carrot absorbed pollutants and therefore carrots were a safer vegetable to eat than the onion or the potato.
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How do you save electricity? Especially with all those street lights? Solapur-based Vedika Doke and Mahi Kasegaonkar offered a solution with their light-sensor. Once the sensor is installed the street lamp’s brightness will adjust according to the light outdoors.
City students Abhishek Kumar Sharma, B Praneeth and Abhijit Kumar also came up with a sensor, but this was an alcohol sensor. They said this would disable the vehicle and prevent the person inside from driving it if he or she had consumed alcohol more than the legal limit!
A cultural programme and a science show by the students of the Technical University of Denmark were well received. Especially the experiment they demonstrated that involved a lot of flames in changing colours.
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