Thursday 9 May 2013

science for kids

Some years, I go as a resource person for a week long lab sessions for IX class kids. This year there were two enthusiastic kids amongst the lot and I enjoyed doing the experiments with them.
This is a summer school for kids who have completed their IX class. The NGO holds a science talent exam. and the top 30 are chosen for this free summer school where they do some experiments and listen to lectures. They are divided into 4 groups, Chem, Bio, Phys and Math  for the lab sessions.
I started going as a resource person in 2002, when I joined the kids to listen to  a really interesting lecture on prime numbers by Prof Tandon of UoH. It impressed me that someone can make something like number theory sound like an exciting story.
I used to go every year, but of late, I had other commitments. Secondly, I used to find it rather dull since the children were unenthusiastic......the session would move only if I gave  specific and exact instructions...add 2 mL, now see if the blue colour appears...etc. They never wanted to do anything on their own, they only followed instructions.
This year was different. Two boys in the Chem group were vocal and interested, two others interested, but a little less vocal and one girl in the Bio group, keen on the Chem experiments. So I enjoyed myself much more than I usually do. They appreciated the nuances.....why a roughly measured 2 mL was OK for a qualitative check, but not for a quantitative experiment.....which is something I struggle to make BSc students understand.  Apart from more serious experiments on water quality, our fun experiment was the minimum concentration of Teepol required to get good stream of bubbles.
(BTW, one of my colleagues in the Physics lab asked her group,  which group was enjoying the summer school the most, and the answer she got from them was the Chemistry group!! )

The science talent exam used to have 3 sections A,B,C consisting of MCQ s in Chem, Bio, Phys and Math. Over the years, coaching centres had come up all over  AP for this exam. We wanted to change the pattern.  So this year, we had section A and B as usual, a section C with three 5 mark questions that required thoughtful answers written in about 5 or 6 lines. This section C of the question paper was to be corrected only for those students who scored in the top 100  in sections A and B.  The ranks were based on section C.
My hypothesis is that it is because of the new pattern that I got at least  a few junior scientists to do the experiments. Maybe the following years will prove me right!


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