Breathless, on-the-run visits to the Kerala State Science and Technology Museum — which hosts an impressive array of science exhibits — will soon be a thing of the past for school students.
Dismayed over the very short, and therefore ineffective, time that students get to spend at the facility, the Museum has drawn up a scheme for ‘adopting' a school or two for a day so that those children will get to spend an entire day at the Museum studying and experimenting with various aspects of science and space.
Exploring
Schools that register with the museum will be able to allow their children a free run of the facility for an entire day. From among the many facilities children will be able to select two — one for the forenoon and one for the afternoon.
Awaiting a formal launch at the museum is an ‘Exploratorium' that includes a smart classroom, a modern laboratory, an observatory and a permanent exhibit from the Space Telescope Science Institute of NASA. Students can begin their day at a smart classroom complete with a white board, Edusat connectivity and video-conferencing facility. Scientists will deliver talks which will give students an understanding of various frontiers of science.
From here the students troop to the laboratories where they can carry out various experiments — including making a miniature volcano — without fear of getting yelled at for spilling chemicals, breaking test tubes or, at a pinch, setting things on fire.
The museum has set up a ‘scientific toys' facility which boasts of material from which more than a 100 such toys can be made by the students themselves. Included in this is the material for making a ‘levitating pencil' that can be fashioned out of a few magnets and a piece of cardboard. At a time, 25 students can use this facility, in groups of five. Each group will be shown a video that details how the toy can be made. The children can even purchase the material for a small price.
Space-gazing
For those who love stargazing there is a roof-top observatory which will offer a 11-inch computerised, GPS-incorporated auto-tracking telescope. This German Equatorial Mount device, which has solar and lunar filters, would be controlled by a laptop. There will be one camera for regular astrophotography and a Nikon D90 complete with accessories for wide-angle astrophotography.
One exhibit which is sure to prove irresistible to science buffs is ‘View Space', an Internet-fed, self-updating permanent exhibit from the Space Telescope Science Institute, home to the Hubble telescope and its successor, the James Web Space Telescope.
This NASA-controlled exhibit will feature presentations on different areas of space science that NASA is working on currently. Some of Hubble's photographs shown in View Space are simple breathtaking.
The museum has an eco-friendly amphitheatre primed for staging science dramas and open-air demonstrations of experiments.
The Exploratorium has a planetarium on wheels. Apart from the usual array of telescopes and ‘Stellarium', an interactive software on the night sky, the van also will have a portable ‘igloo' which acts as a miniature planetarium.
