To popularise STEM among students, IITGN organises week-long Science Awareness Programme

• The event is part of the Government of India’s ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’ and is packed with several exciting and hands-on activities aimed at popularising STEM learning among school students

NE EDUCATION BUREAU

GANDHINAGAR, FEB 23

With an aim to popularise STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) learning and inspire them to pursue careers in various fields of STEM, the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) commenced a week-long Science Awareness Programme on its campus on Tuesday for school students of classes 11^th and 12^th (Science stream). More than 800 school students and teachers from the Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar region are going to participate in the Science Awareness Week activities that will go on from morning 8 am to 2 pm until Friday, February 25, 2022.

The event is part of the Government of India’s ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’ to commemorate 75 years of independence and is funded by the Department of Science & Technology (DST), under the scheme STUTI (Synergistic Training program Utilizing the Scientific and Technological Infrastructure).

The Institute has arranged several interesting and hands-on activities for visiting school students with an aim to popularise STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) learning and inspire them to pursue careers in various fields of STEM. Students get to see various scientific demonstrations such as fire without matchstick, production of Oxygen, disappearing Styrofoam, non-Newtonian fluids using corn-flour, explosion of ping pong balls using Liquid Nitrogen, demonstration of earthquake building models, Electromagnetism, Hall effect, wire loop game, characteristics of dry ice, invisible glass, peeking inside the diaper and the concept of hydrogel, principles of complexation, elephant’s toothpaste, oxidation-reduction, among others. Moreover, students also visited IITGN laboratories and the Sports Complex. IITGN students from various disciplines are actively contributing to the event by volunteering in scientific demonstrations and guiding students during lab visits.

About 200 students with their teachers visited IITGN on Tuesday under this programme and thoroughly enjoyed the activities. Aastha Rawat, a 12^th Science student from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Gandhinagar, said, “I really enjoyed this visit to IITGN and various labs. We could see so many scientific demonstrations in-person and learnt a lot.”

Anand and Himanshu, two classmates of class 11 Science, from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Ahmedabad Cantonment, said, “It felt fantastic to visit new labs here and get to see theories from textbooks translating into actual scientific experiments. We enjoyed attempting the wire loop game.”

Emphasising the significance of such exposure for school students, Uzma Khan, a Chemistry teacher from Kendriya Vidyalaya 1, Gandhinagar, said, “This programme and each and every experiment being demonstrated here is truly stimulating. It is important for students to see that Science can be so interesting and exciting when learnt outside textbooks. It can ignite students’ curiosity and motivate them to explore more.”