The Brahma Science festival – 2018 was conducted on August 3rd and 4th at Bhavan’s Rajaji Vidyashram, which was an eye opener and an opportunity for the students and teachers at AAIS – TSS. It let the students learn, use and demonstrate learnt concepts with reasoning. Students were benefited from hands on experience and active exploration.
Students learnt how to plan in an organized way which helped them to narrow down the main topic “Energy” into “Water through Solar power”.
This Science festival helped students, to think beyond their age groups and look into higher order research, which built the competitive spirits and challenge in them.
Brahma Science festival had given a well-organized flow, for conducting a research and to build up the working model. This helped students to follow step wise method in conducting research, such as:
• Introduction,
• Hypothesis,
• Background search,
• Interpretation of data,
• Conclusion,
• Further research.
The students had also learnt to identify – requirements, methods and procedures in creating the working model.
Through immense research on this concept – “Water through Solar power”, our students conducted various trials adopting to our land and weather conditions to attain the required result. All the trials where conducted within the available facilities.
Through these trials students could think beyond and simplify the final experimental set up to Beakers and Artificial light source.
With complete support of school, teachers, students and parents, the event was successful. Our team of students could make it to the Top best 20 science projects out of 150 teams.
Our team of students were awarded with Special Jury award.
Our students had an opportunity to look into different innovations created by other schools, which were derived from various ideas and planned methodologies.
Some of the projects that impressed our students where,
“Life is possible on Mars”, where the procedure of gene modification in humans was the underlining concept.
“Prevention from snake bite”, this team had a chip inserted in each slipper. Where one slipper gives the vibration while the other a high frequency sound. On feeling the vibration and hearing the sound no Snake or any other insect would come near the farmers.
“Prototype of a Drone”, as a video recorder.
“Mutation and its types”, the underlining concepts was the oxidation of apples in various environments.
“Managing waste at the primary level to ensure green computing”, the underlining concept was Reuse, Reduce and Recycle.
“Pascal’s Law application”, this team had implemented the law as a lift in the train coaches, making feasible for passengers to reach the middle berth and upper berth.
“Smart cane (stick) for visually impaired people”, with the use of sensors, the device would help the visually impaired people to overcome obstacles in their way.
Through all these various projects our students could learn, how they could improve on organized planning, presentation, group co-ordinations, taking on responsibilities, time management, feedback and feed forward, research extensively towards the concept, strategies of execution and improve the quality of work.
It was a learning experience for our students and hope more opportunities knock our door.
STUDENTS REFLECTION – THE BRAHMA SCIENCE FESTIVAL
I was one among the five lucky students who got a chance to participate in the Brahma science festival 2018 held in Chennai. It was a memorable experience and I thank the teachers who chose me for this project. It gave us an opportunity to present our work before a large audience which consisted of experts from IIT. We were competing with around 200 schools from South India.
We were given the topic ‘Energy’ from which we had to narrow down to a sub topic. Finding out the right sub-topic within a limited period of time was difficult and challenging. We had to do extensive research for this and it was a good learning experience.
We arrived at the topic – “Water through Solar energy” for which we had basically created a working prototype that can draw water out of thin air using solar energy. We successfully collected a good amount of water using our prototype.
Once we finished testing the model, our next task was to present the prototype and research before a large and learned audience. The research work along with diagrams and photographs were printed and stuck neatly on black charts.
At the festival we were able to present our work properly before the audience and answer their questions. The Special Jury award was a great encouragement for us. I look forward to be part such good learning experiences in future.
At the festival there were also some very interesting models brought by other schools. One of the schools had made a prototype of a drone onto which, a camera was attached. Some teams were able to come out with innovative ideas capable of addressing several problems faced by today’s world.
The Brahma science festival was an entirely different experience for me. It helped me improve a lot of essential skills like body language, handling a crowd and most importantly my confidence level. This was also when I realized I was more comfortable presenting in front an unknown crowd than a familiar one.
Apart from my team’s preparation and presentation what amused me was other school projects! One stall was about how ” Life is possible on Mars” this was an interesting topic but I had many questions regarding the gene modification that the students were addressing at first I hesitated but they were more than welcoming to answer all my questions Moreover there was no chaos or doubt in the team who was going to answer the questions, that is: the presentation was well planned/clear/engaging. Other such projects included: ” Eco friendly refrigerator”, “garbage collector”, “prevention from snake bite” One thing I learnt from all these projects is how different everyone thinks (perspectives) and their mode of presentation along with their group coordination.
