After a couple of weeks of very hard work, the science exhibition at the school got done. The 5th class children had done some charts........leaves, flowers and fruits in and around their campus. The 6th and 7th had a little more ambitious projects. Of these, a few worked quite hard while some children expected me to do it all for them and thought they just had to stand there and talk a bit. Of the few good ones was this 5th class boy who did some work for ALL the projects. He helped build the clay mountain with hidden funnel and tube for the hydel plant, he built the volcano with a hidden bottle for the soda volcano, he made a car with a cardboard carton for a balloon driven car, he helped me with the solar oven and with my first unsuccessful biogas plant. I was very impressed with this little boy. There were others who did well too. One project that I did not even have to touch was the "Braino"....made totally by a 6th class boy. I just had to explain how the connections were to be made. After a couple of false starts, he got it right.
There was this girl who had heard about chromatography and insisted on doing it. I tried to discourage it since I did not feel I could explain to them the principle behind it well enough for a 6th class child to understand. Finally, I used a strip of paper kitchen towel and separated green ink using water as mobile phase. The girl who had made a model of a solar oven and the boy who had made a model hydel did an excellent job of explaining what their model was about.
My saviours in this whole episode were two young women who were studying for their MPharm. They had a break while they were waiting for some company to organise their internship. They helped me with some of the work, specially in view of my miserably inadequate Telugu, they could translate what I said to make the younger kids understand.
There was this girl who had heard about chromatography and insisted on doing it. I tried to discourage it since I did not feel I could explain to them the principle behind it well enough for a 6th class child to understand. Finally, I used a strip of paper kitchen towel and separated green ink using water as mobile phase. The girl who had made a model of a solar oven and the boy who had made a model hydel did an excellent job of explaining what their model was about.
My saviours in this whole episode were two young women who were studying for their MPharm. They had a break while they were waiting for some company to organise their internship. They helped me with some of the work, specially in view of my miserably inadequate Telugu, they could translate what I said to make the younger kids understand.
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