KOCHI: Every year, the Druk Padma Karpo School in Ladakh welcomes tourists to the school where the popular screen character Rancho of ‘Three Idiots’ built classrooms to make children fall in love with science.
The ‘love’ part is often found lacking in the Indian education system. Retired science teacher B Sasikumar sums it up succinctly: “The way science is taught now puts to rest all claims of the child being a natural-born scientist. Science education is now a torturous terrain to sustain which students need mental muscles more than grey matter.”
Result is, as students climb the academic ladder, math turns into a horror, and physics and chemistry become Latin and Greek for many. Realising this gap, several premier institutes have been initiating projects to instill a fascination for science among young minds, and even the public in general.
One such initiative is ‘The Crucible’, the new science activity centre at the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER), Thiruvananthapuram. A stride into this space is like straying into a field where the Pythagoras theorem doesn’t mean just diagrams on paper but a conglomerate of three triangular shapes with which the famous theorem finds a practical explanation.
Nearby, there is a model that practically breaks down the Avogadro number, a famous constant in chemistry that defines the number of particles per mole of a substance.
Next to it, the maths activity section is a dimly lit room with equipment to show the play of light when it passes through lenses. School students have for long made precise ray diagrams on how light wades through particles that make up the lenses and gets bent in the process. But to see it happen for real is probably something that they are not used to.
“Here, they get to see what has just been theory and diagrams for them so far,” says assistant professor Vinayak B Kamble. He directs students from a school in Thiruvananthapuram district to a table where a miniscule universe is brewing.
“About 99 per cent of the universe is in plasma state,” he explains, with ‘Fusor’ apparatus showing the plasma state. Fascinating the thought probably might have been for the students who watched the demonstration of nuclear fusion wide-eyed.
On another table are bobs attached to strings to depict the transfer of energy and movement of the pendulum. Again something that usually remains on the pages of physics textbooks.
On the floor below, a well-lit room has several models of rockets. A group of school students, on a visit to the centre, try to assemble one.
The students were upbeat, with the assembly line-up as well as with the upcoming lecture on moon by Dr Shyama Narendranath, a senior ISRO scientist. Some are quite intrigued by the volumes here on space, cosmos and the way the universe is.
Stepping out into the vast space nestled amidst the Western Ghats, snugly close to Bonacaud and Ponmudi where the institute’s Thiruvananthapuram campus is located, Vinayak has lots to say about how he feels science needs a total rehaul in terms of the way it is imparted.
Being a part of IISER’s outreach has helped him do that to an extent. Also, IISER’s activities, like those of its science festival ‘Anvesha’, includes initiatives for taking science to the masses, especially school children who visit during the annual fest to get a hang of things.
“Yet we did not have a space where science could be disseminated as a topic simple enough to be understood as a part of life,” he says.
That took shape over a year ago, when Vinayak, along with a few others, were asked to study about successful outreach activities of IISER Pune and IISc Bengaluru. “It was the brainchild of IISER Thiruvananthapuram director J N Moorthy and board of governing chair Arvind Natu. So, under the guidance of Prof Joy Mitra (dean of academics), we studied how we could set up a science activity centre here,” he says.
“We wanted a space where science could be introduced to students from schools as a subject of curiosity, and not mere rote learning. We also wanted to inspire teachers to make science interesting.”
Schools have started visiting The Crucible. “We are also planning to take the club activities to schools where we can put up night sky shows,” Dr Vinayak says.
The centre now has plans to train school teachers as well. “How many of the schools take their students out to ‘show’ them science or the aspects of nature that can be scientifically studied?” Vinayak wonders.
He adds that students visiting the space discover that science is “lively and fun”. “Some of them return for deeper study. It is all about the perspective with which the subject is taught,” Vinayak says, adding that science popularisation needs to be part of policy as envisaged by associations such as the Indian National Young Academy of Sciences.
“The hurdles faced by science teachers, their training, the need for young researchers to find jobs… all these should be focused upon.”
Scientists too can take a lead, he asserts. “How much are scientists willing to go and talk about science to people?” he asks.
The Crucible is thus a vital step towards this end, says Shabnam Iyyani, an assistant professor at the institute. “Science works mostly on inspiration. I have felt that while doing my academics. Here, we aim to inspire and make science easier for those who aspire to study it,” she says.
Listening to the faculty here, and the students who seemed at ease dabbling with the activities in front of them, one feels science is more about ways to think than thoughts themselves. And The Crucible aims to help explore those ways.