Sir Sivaswami Kalalaya celebrated National Science Day from 22.2.2010 to 24.2.2010. The week’s celebration started with a short speech about National Science Day, and was followed by a paper presentation on robotics by 2 alumnus of our school. The audience was class 11 students.
The presentation gave very interesting information about autonomous and manual robots, semiconductors, micro controller, nano robots, etc. It is predicted that in the future nano robots can be used to cure cancer cells. They also explained how to build a line following robot and showed a model of it.
Then they showed videos of ASIMO, a humanoid robot created by Honda, playing football. There were also other robots showing a nano robot replacing a neuron, a snake robot, hexapod, line follower robot, edge avoider, etc. The two ex-students said that a line follower robot can also be used as a spy!
A Dumsharads competition was held for class 6 students.
Later in the evening, class 8 and 9 students were shown a science based movie in the school auditorium. The show was obviously enjoyed by all! Class 8 was lucky this year because they were called as the audience for most of the programs.
On Tuesday there was an extremely interesting and lively Guest lecture “An Invitation to Physics” for these students by Dr. M.V.Satyanarayanan, Associate Professor, Department of Physics, IIT, Madras. He wanted the students to understand that Physics is actually interesting, which many people do not generally agree!
He gave a very lively speech combined with a dash of humour. Through the PowerPoint show he made us understand that Maths, Economics, Physic, Chemistry, Biology, and all other subjects are actually interlinked and one cannot survive without the other. The following information was taken from one of the slides. It shows how Physics helps Medicine.
Fever – Thermometer
Blood Pressure – Sphygmomanometer
Heart beat, Lungs, etc. – Stethoscope
Fracture – X-Rays
Eye Examination – Ophthalmoscope
Tumors – MRI, CT Scan, Ultrasound
Ear Examination – Turning forks, etc.
Heart – ECG
Brain – EEG
Did you know that 2005 was celebrated as “The year of Physics” and it coincided with the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein? The Professor kept the students busy in taking down little facts that he told here and there.
Then came the most interesting part of the lecture in which he performed simple experiments in front of the enthusiastic audience. He kept a tennis ball on top of a football and dropped them both together. The football bounced and hit the tennis ball which almost touched the roof due to the pressure from the football, before coming back! The audience was thrilled and clapped till their hands pained because they hadn’t expected the ball to bounce so high!
Then he swirled a top which looked very normal. It started spinning and suddenly it overturned and continued spinning without any disturbance!
Then he took a dish like thing with a lid with a hole in it. When you look at the hole from a certain angle you can see a small pink little toy pig standing on a mirror. But when you try to hold the pig you are unable to do it! Even the teachers were amazed. Then the Professor revealed that the inner side of the dish was made of mirror in which he had placed a small picture of the pig. This lively lecture ended with a question session.
Then an oratorical competition on the topic “If you were the Environment Minister, explain your policies to improve your city or country” was held for class 7 students.
On Wednesday a Potpourri competition was held for class 8 students. It was mainly based on science and consisted of games such as Dumsharads, Pick out the good word, Pictionary, etc.
All these competitions were conducted two Class 8 students, H.Malini and Meera Viswanathan.
Everybody agreed that this was the best science week celebration ever!