Reachingout to schools

Dr. Sourav Pal, Director of NCL, spoke to the 8^th and 9^th standard students of the Hutatma Balveer PMC Vidya Niketan at Police Lines (25/March/2011; 11.30 am).  This lecture was part of the series of science outreach lectures organized by the Exciting Science Group (http://www.excitingscience.org), aimed at generating interest in science among school students.  Dr. Pal’s talk was on “History of Chemistry”, and traced the origins of chemistry over the last 5000 years, through medieval alchemy, through important discoveries and inventions in chemistry over the last 150 years, to modern day advanced materials.  To keep the interest of the students, the talk used several videos and experiments to bring out the fun elements of chemistry.  For example, he demonstrated how a super absorbent polymer (SAP, an advanced material based on NCL technology) could absorb a large amount of liquid water, and form a solid-like gel. Such materials are used in agriculture, in diapers and sanitary products etc. The students were amazed when water poured into a glass containing a small amount of SAP “gelled” could not be poured out.  Dr. Pal addressed the students in Hindi and English, and Mrs. Gulawani, a teacher from the Vidya Niketan school helped by translating some of the concepts into Marathi.  The talk ended with a few fun experimental demonstrations of disappearing ink, acid-base chemistry, etc.  Dr. Pal’s message to the students was that chemistry is very exciting and relevant to every single aspect of our life.  He emphasized that advances in chemistry hold the key to our future and hoped that the students would consider careers in chemistry.

At the end of this session, the Exciting Science Group distributed an illustrated comic book on The Story of Chemistry to the students.  Interestingly, this book is authored by Dr. Anirban Hazra (MSc from IITB; PhD from Princeton), and a former student of Dr. Pal.  The books distributed to the students were supported by generous donations from Forbes Marshall, the Praj Foundation, Battelle India and Ms. Anu Aga and family.