Various institutes in Pune host a series of events to mark National Science Day

The National Science Day was celebrated with enthusiasm across the city on Thursday, as various science exhibitions, talks and programs were organised by the educational institutions, and science and technology centres.

National Science Day is observed every year to mark the discovery of the Raman effect by Indian physicist Sir CV Raman on February 28, 1928. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.

The main attraction for city students was the scientific games exhibition at the Science Park department in the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU).

Right from Science talks to exhibition of different projects on astronomy and astrophysics it was a scientific treat from students at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics(IUCCA). Talks by prominent speakers and a special interaction session ‘Ask a scientist’ with astrophysicist Jayant Naralikar was organised.

While there were different projects exhibited, a project on ‘astronomical sources of gravitational waves’ demonstration and informative display along with citizen science setup was appreciated by the students.

Sairam Rao, 20 a second year merchant navy student from Tolani Maritime Institute said, “The projects displayed and the talks by renowned personalities were very informative. It was a good learning experience for us, which will be useful in our future.”

Various projects based on Biodiversity were exhibited at the Agharkar Research Institute (ARI) by their PhD students.

At the India Meteorological Department (IMD), Pune an open day was organised displaying their different types of instruments used for weather measurement, temperature, ground movement and other instruments.

SPPU SCIENCE PARK DEPARTMENT

It was a day full of scientific experiments, games and fun learning for the students visiting the SPPU Science park department. Children of various age groups were seen at the exhibition. The main attraction in the exhibition were, the 8-foot talking tree, scientific board games and a horror show, where a talking skeleton shared information regarding the various functions of the body with the students. It was interesting to see that students from Class 5 and 6 from different city-based schools were demonstrating the scientific projects, games and models of college and university level.

Firoz Sayyed, 13 a Class 6 student of Geetabhai Tatyarao Pawar high school had came all the way from Daund to visit this exhibition with his father, “Science is my favourite subject and when I came to know about this exhibition I decided to come here. There are a lot of new things that I learnt here about modern science like visualising your own sound, the laser effect of light and most importantly got to know about the human body parts in detail.”

INDIA METEOROLOGICAL DEPARTMENT

Puneites got to know about various weather measuring instruments and other equipments at India Meteorological Department’s open day. Cup counter Anemometer, Non-recording Rainguage were demonstrated by the staff. Swamini Jagtap, 12 a Class 7 student from Mount Carmel school said, “We were given an assignment by the school to visit this exhibition. We only know that the weather is humid on a certain day, but today after watching the working of these equipments, I understood about it. I would certainly like to learn more.”

AGHARKAR RESEARCH INSTITUTE EXHIBITION

An exhibition with the theme of biodiversity was displayed at Agharkar Research Institute. In the biodiversity, palaeobiology section a real dinosaur egg and trace fossils were on display. Rameshwar Auchar, 26 and his team had a new type of fungi inside a silk worm which was displayed for the first time. “Inventing something new is a thrilling experience and now we have an isolated fungi inside the silk worm, we are working on this project now. There is always something new to learn daily while pursuing these kind of projects. ”