Students can now view the Milky Way sitting in an inflatable at school. Prajwal and Gagan, second year B.Sc. students from Mysuru, have developed a low-cost inflatable mobile planetarium, which they have been taking to government schools.
Their project was selected at the Leadership Challenge–2014, conducted by the Leader Accelerating Development of Deshpande Foundation, and this helped them take the project forward.
Speaking to presspersons on Monday, they said the objective was to create scientific temper among government schoolchildren and children with disabilities.
But, the initial days were not encouraging. “We tried to build a low-cost unit and failed owing to technical glitches. But we didn’t lose heart; we worked on the same concept, made some innovations, and ultimately it clicked,” said Prajwal. He said the NASA educational website was of great help in redesigning their working model. The planetarium is made of tarpaulin and it has a table fan, projector and a computer, totally costing around Rs. 4,000. The egg-shaped unit can seat 15 persons at a time. The students have made use of Stellarium, an open source planetarium software, for the project. “We wanted students to learn about the solar system. As they may not be able to go to the planetarium, we take the mobile planetarium to them,” said Gagan.
