V.Viswanathan
Students find many a concept of science difficult to comprehend despite hours of getting lectured. ‘Tell me, I’ll forget; Show me, I’ll remember; Involve me, I’ll understand,” goes a saying.
Albert Einstein once wrote, “It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.” It’s believed that Einstein’s obsession with physics was triggered even as he was a child of four or five when his father showed him a small compass. ‘What’s it that makes the compass needle move?’ little Albert wondered and his quest for answers to various riddles of science began.
Museums, planetariums, zoos and exhibition centres across the country, though handful in number, play a part in complementing class room information and it’s important that their numbers multiply, they’re nourished and fully utilised by the learner community. Science exhibitions organised now and then by educational institutions turn out to be precious in kindling interest.
My memory goes back to early seventies when I happened to visit with my family an exceptionally well organised science exhibition. My father was working in VOC College, Tuticorin as an English lecturer. The college, as part of commemorating the birth centenary of freedom fighter V. O. Chidambaram Pillai had organised the event that stretched to a month on popular demand and whose magnitude and quality of contents were spellbinding.
The entire college wore a festive look with teachers, students and admin staff fully digging in their heels. Every department in a spirit of healthy competition came up with a mindboggling array of exhibits, models, specimens, demos and live experiments.
The college had erected on its grounds skeletons of a giant whale, a horse, a human and an elephant. Children took a fancy for clicking photos standing near them. Even today, these skeletons and most of the specimens are available in the college. The Chemistry segment reacted with crackling sound of flame accompanied by pungent odours off colourful solutions. The Physics section featured experiments on matter, motion, electricity and magnetism.
There was no dearth of fun component too. One room was dedicated to distorting mirrors where we laughed hilariously looking at our disfigured faces. There was another dark room that housed skeletons with red lights glowing from their eye sockets, some dancing and some playing music. We could shake hands with a few and even talk to a skeleton. An unseen volunteer replied humorously to our questions. Children made shrill noises of ‘uhhhh….’ as they entered this eerie room and elevated it to the level of JK Rowling’s fictitious Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
On the whole, we had a whale of a time and came home with an elephantine takeaway of pure scientific knowledge and a curiosity to pursue learning.
