Feature Release
Pioneering Science Expo Brims With Stalls That Ignite Curiosity
New Delhi, Dec 6: Two carrom strikers are placed on a glass pane that has its edge slightly raised, and
whichever direction you finger-flick one of them, it strikes the other after rebounding.
This exercise is intriguing fun for the average visitor at the ongoing Science & Technology and
Industrial Expo in the national capital, though the dynamics involved in the system have far serious
applications.
“The same technique is used in precision targeting of missiles. It is also valid for the dish or antenna
that receives signal for television sets,” says Rakesh Kumar Tripathi, Education Assistant with National
Council of Science Museums (NCSM), explaining that the strikers rest on foci of the elliptic board, thus
making the trick work.
The government-allied NCSM, the world’s largest chain of science centres under a single
administrative umbrella, is among the 240-plus organisations that have set up stalls at the country’s
biggest-ever such expo, running parallel to the December 4-8 India International Science Festival
(IISF).
IISF 2015 is being organised by the Ministries of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences in
collaboration with Vijnana Bharati, the largest science movement in the country, with the Technology
Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) as the nodal agency.
If the basic idea of the five-day event being organised at IIT Delhi is to bring science to the common
people, the NCSM stall is among those which best exemplify the spirit.
The stall also features an installation that proves a basic point: light per se is invisible. “It is only when
a beam of light hits an object that you get to see it,” points out 1965-founded NCSM’s education trainee
Sunil Dubey. Driving home his point, the youngster inserts his palm into the darkness of a longish cut
across a vertical tube which has light actually streaming from the top, but this light can only be seen
when it strikes the obstruction.
Inspiring a new generation to join the practical side of science is another aim of the first IISF. Taking a
cue from it, Indian Institute of Technology Indore has a stall trumpeting its Student Entrepreneurship
Support Cell. The 2012-launched initiative promotes, for instance, smart manufacturing that facilitates
intelligent planning to run an industry with meticulous functioning of its various units in harmony.
The system, called ‘Industry Smartware’, features dynamic decision-making, machine/plant analytics,
customisation capability, improved asset management and advanced optimisation capabilities, point
out students of the 2009-established institute in Madhya Pradesh.
“Also we have a competition where students are asked to come up with ideas. The ones selected
qualify to become product-oriented companies. We already have five such entities,” says Vibhor
Pandhare, an M.Tech (Production and Industrial Engineering) student.
Chimes in his junior Namit Agrawal: “We also have a ‘tinkering lab’ where students can go for random
experiments—some of which would click.”
Another IISF motive is to preserve age-old assets around science-related activities. For instance, the
Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) in Kerala has a stall that displays more than 300
varieties of traditional paddy from the southern state.
“We collected them over the past decade. What’s more, we now have a genome bank of all these rice
seeds,” points out Prof M. Radhakrishna Pillai, director of 13-year-old RGCB, Thiruvananthapuram.
Adds George Varghese, RGCB Senior Manager (Technical Services): “Any farmer looking for the
traditional variety can approach us; it’s there with us forever.”
At the stall of AYUSH (the ministry promoting Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and
Homeopathy), pamphlets speak of traditional Indian solutions to a variety of diseases. “Of late, these
wellness systems are making a stronger presence in our medicinal choices. They are relevant to
current and future generations,” says A. Jayakumar, Secretary-General of Vijnana Bharati—India’s
biggest science movement which organises the World Ayurveda Congress.
The 1988-instituted TIFAC, functioning under the Department of Science & Technology is digitising its
Patent Facilitating Centre to ensure speed to the process of clearance, informs the Mann Bardhan
Kanth, who heads the Communications and Publication wing of the autonomous organisation which
has its stall set up at IISF.
The 240-odd stalls inside a spacious venue spanning over 100,000 sq ft is attracting crowds, who are
also visiting other participants which include Defence Research and Development Organisation,
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bharat Electronics
Limited and National Thermal Power Corporation.