EXPERIMENTSYOU CAN DO

02 In attaining our ideals,our meansshould be as pure as the end!Dr Rajendra Prasad BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

Science can be a little intimidating.Whether it’s the latest research in quantummechanics or organic chemistry, sciencecan make your head spin. But you can makelearning fun by conducting theseexperiments — not in a high-tech lab — athome, using materials that are easilyavailable. We list a few easy ways for you tosee science in action

You can create your own tornado in a bottle. WHAT YOU NEED: Two bottles, a tube to con-nect the bottles, and some water. WHAT HAPPENS: When you swirl the liquid inthe top bottle, it creates a vortex as it drainsinto the bottom bottle. WHY DOES IT HAPPEN: That’s because asthe water flows down, air must flow up, cre-ating a spiralling tornado. You can even addglitter, food dye, or lamp oil to the bottle tomake the tornado to add ‘drama’!

TORNADO IN A BOTTLE

DID YOU KNOW: When you mix glue, water,and a little bit of food colouring, and thenadd some borax, a gooey mass forms. EXPLANATION: That’s because the glue hassomething called polyvinyl acetate in it,which is a liquid polymer. The borax links thepolyvinyl acetate molecules to each other,creating one large, flexible polymer: slime.

GOOEY SLIME

This experiment uses density tocreate a rainbow in a glass. WHATHAPPENS: When you add sugar to aliquid, it causes the solution tobecome more dense. The moresugar you add, the more dense thesolution. NOTE: If you have fourdifferent solutions that have dif-ferent colours and densities, thecolours will layer atop each other— the denser, more sugary solu-tions will sit at the bottom and thelightest will sit on the top.

RAINBOW IN A GLASS

BELIEVE IT OR NOT: You can create a sim-ple hybrid rocket engine using nothing butyeast, hydrogen peroxide, a jar, fire and apiece of uncooked pasta. When you mix theyeast and hydrogen peroxide together,they react and create oxygen gas. Whenthis gas is funnelled through a piece ofpasta, all you need is a little bit of fire andyou’ve got yourself a pasta rocket.

PASTA ROCKET

DID YOU KNOW: Alka-seltzer an effervescent antacidis also great if you’re looking to create your ownhomemade lava lamp. Because oil and water havedifferent densities and polarities, when you mixthem together, the water sinks to the bottom. NNOOTTEE::When you add food colouring, which is water based,it will sink to the bottom as well.WWHHAATT HHAAPPPPEENNSS:: If you crumble an alka-seltzertablet, it reacts with the water, causing coloureddroplets of water to rise to the top where they thenpop, release air, and sink back to the bottom. This creates a similar show to what you'd see in a lava lamp.

HOMEMADE LAVA LAMP

In this experiment, a chemical reaction betweenbaking soda and vinegar creates “lava” burstingout of a model volcano. WHAT HAPPENS: As the reaction produces carbondioxide gas, pressure builds up inside a plastic bot-tle hidden inside the volcano until the gas bubblesand erupts.

BAKING SODA VOLCANO

This experiment makes it easy to see magnet-ic fields in action. All you need is some ironoxide, water, and a jar. When you place anextremely powerful magnet along the outsideof the jar, the iron filings are attracted to it,piling up, and following the magnet as youmove it around.

FERROMAGNETIC FLUID

DID YOU KNOW: For water to become ice,it needs a nucleus so that the solid crystals

form. Usually, water is loaded with parti-cles and impurities that enable ice to form.But purified water doesn’t have theseimpurities. So it can reach an even coldertemperature before becoming solid. If youthrow an unopened bottle of purified waterinto the freezer for a little less than threehours, the bottle will be chilled well belowthe temperature at which regular waterfreezes. WHAT HAPPENS: When you pour thesuper-cooled water on to a piece of ice, itprovides the water with nuclei, causing itto freeze instantly.

INSTANT ICE

Experiments play acrucial role in the

ongoing intellectualdevelopment of children.We are more likely toremember what we touchand see than what we learn. SANIA SURESH, class VIII, Gregorian PublicSchool, Ernakulam

HOW DO EXPERIMENTSHELP US

Experiments will enable astudent to understand

all necessary prerequi-sites (setting up, pre-cautions needed to be

taken, etc) and alsoexperience the concept in

the form of an experiment. ARUSHA GOMBER, class X, GEAR InnovativeInternational School, Bengaluru

Learning with projects makesit more acceptable andinteresting. Science proj-ects help us to rememberdifficult concepts as weare building something fromscratch.SUCHITA PAL, class XI, Lucknow PublicSchool, Lucknow

Practical implementationis the best tool forlearning. Projects allowactive engagement ofstudents, thereby mak-

ing complex conceptseasier to understand. They

also help to promote scientific thinking.

ABHIRUP TAPADAR, class VIII,

Marble Arch School, Mumbai

BeautifulMINDSWe look at five women scientists whoare doing phenomenal work — in fields

as diverse as quantum tech andpaleoecology. They have aimed for the

moon, dissected the brain andshattered stereotypes and glass

ceilings on the way to the top

In 1999, after her PhD in computer sci-ence from the University of Califor-nia, Berkeley, and a stint at Carnegie

Mellon, Sarawagi returned to India withher husband and joined IIT-Bombay. “Atthat time, the internet boom was just tak-ing off in the US but we decided not towaver. We had the zeal to do somethingin India,” says Sarawagi. She is one ofthe foremost figures in the fields of datamining and machine learning in India,and is the recipient of this year’s $100,000Infosys Prize in engineering and com-puter science. She has been working on

the problem of information extraction,or how to extract structured informationfrom unstructured data, for close to 20years, and is considered one of the pio-neers in the field.

SUNITA SARAWAGI, 50Institute Chair Professor, ComputerScience & Engineering, IIT-Bombay

Area of Research: Data mining, machinelearningWorks on extracting structured info fromunstructured data & how to maximise thereuse of neural network models used intranslation

Machine Teaching

Considering one of India’s biggestchallenges is the lack of teachersand infrastructure, I want to seeif we can do anything about it interms of technology

Devapriya Chattopadhyay delves verydeep into the past — about 20 mil-lion years, to be specific — to find

the possible pathways of the biodiversitycrisis that we are facing now. An associateprofessor in Pune, Chattopadhyay worksin paleoecology, or ecology of the past, bystudying fossils.

“The majority of the factors that gov-ern extinction of groups take a really longtime, much longer than the humantimescape,” says the 39-year-old. “If you re-

ally want to understand the processes thattrigger these changes, how these factors op-erate and how they are interlinked, you needto understand the long-term effects, whichis through fossil record.”

Trawling theDepths of Time

It gives us a clue about whatglobal warming might be doingbecause the melting of ice andfreshening of water are leadingto a drop in salinity of the seawater. We should be worried

Vidita Vaidya recalls being fascinated bythe idea of behaviour right from child-hood. By the time Vaidya was ready to go

to college, she knew she had to study the brainto learn about behaviour. It’s something she hasnow devoted her life to. If, as a young girl, hercuriosity was piqued by how a caterpillar knewexactly how much thread to weave, as an adultVaidya grapples with weightier questions, in-volving the circuitry of the human brain. Vaidyaand her team are trying to understand the cir-cuitry that regulates emotional behaviour, andhow these neural circuits respond to experi-ences and changes in the environment, partic-ularly in the early stages of life.

Ishtiaq is the only scientist in India,and one of the few in South Asia, tostudy in detail the spread of malaria

in birds. For close to a decade now, she hasbeen researching avian malaria, doingfield work across seven sites in the Hi-malayas where she monitors bird migra-tion, temperature gradient and what par-asites birds are carrying, among otherthings. Ishtiaq’s study on birds could havean effect on research on human malaria,which affects over 9 million in India, eventhough the host is different. “The kind ofdata I’m collecting can be easily appliedto human parasites, too, and you can pre-dict changes there as well,” says Ishtiaq.

VIDITA VAIDYA, 49Professor, Tata Institute ofFundamental Research

Area of Research: Neuroscienceworks on how experiences, stressaffect the circuitry of the brain

Brain Gain Amedical doctor by training, GagandeepKang started out on the path of researchonce she decided that she did not want to

get sucked into the tedium of seeing the same pa-tients over and over, which tends to happen in mi-crobiology, her specialisation. She began focus-ing on diarrhoea and viral gastroenteritis andhas now been studying gut infections, particu-larly in children, for decades. The 57-year-old isconsidered an expert in gut functions and its re-lationship with development.

Her other areas of work include typhoid sur-veillance and developing a roadmap for cholera.“Typhoid is a hugely under-recognised problemin the country because it affects the poor. Theseare both vaccine preventable,” says Kang.

GAGANDEEP KANG, 57Executive Director,

TranslationalHealth Science &

TechnologyInstitute

Area of Research:Gastrointestinal sci-

ences, typhoid,nutritionWorks on

infections of the gut

Gut Feeling

I think about how privileged I am tobe part of this incredible scientificjourney. I often tell myself that it’srare to have a job that you are soexcited to do

It made me think that birds inIndia must be carrying malariasince malaria is endemic here. Idecided to work on disease ecol-ogy as my main focus

Nutrition in children is my focus,especially how constant infectionscan damage the gut and, in turn,have an adverse effect on health

FARAH ISHTIAQ, 46Senior Scientist, TataInstitute for Genetics andSociety

Area of Research:Evolutionary ecology. Workson the spread of malaria inbirds

Rare Bird

DEVAPRIYACHATTOPADHYAY, 39Associate Professor, Dept of EarthSciences, IISER

Area of Research: PaleoecologyWorks on fossil records of molluscs from Kutchto study the effects of climate change

ROLE PLAY