Fun Science Club

Funscience club is precisely what the name says. It is a place where children can come and enjoy science, away from academic pressures and the rat race to get 110% marks. This is what we have been endeavoring to do since 2004 in community setting, including under-privileged communities.  

Our driving philosophy:

Curiosity and a desire to explore have driven people from all walks of life, including scientists, engineers and adventurers, to spend long hours in the laboratories and out in the field. Don’t we see children doing the same when they are playing with their toys, in the field outside or on computers?   So, it is only natural that when science experiments are done like exploratory games or construction activities, children enjoy them (we have not seen an exception in last 20 years).  Can learning be far behind then?

Next, we believe that our five senses are the first instruments that we should be using to explore the world of fun science.  And, using these instruments we first describe our "readings" in subjective terms - hot, warm, cold, light, dark, big, small, and then there is a whole world of smells and fragrances in the nature. Our guesstimation series of workshops use these built-in instruments that we posses together with the instruments that quantify our guesses.

Each child is unique and therefore has a unique learning style.  We conduct hands-on science activities which are in sync with a child's learning style.  We, as the workshop facilitators,  get to know their learning style when work closely with them.  This helps us fine-tune the workshop delivery and explanations on-the-fly. Therefore, we prefer to keep the group size small (no more than 3-4 children in one group).  In some cases, we can conduct fun science workshops even for a single kid.

Given below is a  small glimpse of  some of the  workshops we have conducted. Minimum number of participants in any workshop is one (max 3-4 in most cases). If you have any specific topic in mind, please do not hesitate to contact us. In some cases, we help children (grade 6 -12) with their  school science project. Please note that we do not sell ready-made projects. We help students build their projects.

Should you wish to know something more or to book a workshop please contact Sanjay at 9811305947, or write to us at vu2sga@gmail.com

                                                                                              Some of the Workshops conducted earlier

2. Guesstimation (Guess + Estimation)

1. This workshop is about testing how well can we estimate the physical quantities that we encounter everyday, without measuring. In our daily lives we are often  called upon to estimate such as whether a given of box of sweets is actually 1Kg or is it less, and estimates of this nature? How do we go about improving this ability?

In this workshop we play a set of games involving estimation of dimensions( length, width, height and radius) and  weight  of common objects. And then we check these estimations against measurements. In this process we hope to improve our guessing and estimating abilities.  

Eligibility: Anyone above the age of 7 years

2. Guesstimation-II (Guess + Estimation)

In the second part of guesstimation workshop  we  deal with estimation of  audio frequencies, fragrances and volume of common objects. In the process we hope to improve our guessing and estimating abilities involving senses other than sense of sight too. 

Eligibility: Anyone above the age of 8 years

3.  Dissection

Do you ever wish to rip open gadgets and devices to see how they work? Here is your chance. In this workshop you will dismantle a variety of things such as computer hard-disk, mouse, keyboard, UPS, cells, etc. and peep inside. Come and demolish what you were never allowed to demolish before!!

Eligibility: 5th -10th grade students

4. Microscopy

Put just about anything under a microscope and you will see a very beautiful and fascinating world!  In this workshop you shall see how flowers, leaves, insects and many other things from everyday life look like. In the process you will effortlessly learn how to use compound and stereo microscopes. All hands-on as usual. You figure out the theory at your leisure, should you so desire!

Eligibility: Anyone above the age of 8 years

Duration: 2 hours

5. Make your own 3D Images

Three-dimentional images and movies are fascinating, aren't they? How do our eyes and brain work together to let us perceive the three dimensions? In this workshop the children figure this out in a hands-on fashion.

6. Chemicals and Electricity

Electricity and chemicals have an interesting relationship. Cells and batteries rely on chemicals to generate or store electrical energy for us.  Electricity, on the other hand, can cause certain chemical reactions to take place. We shall see many of these in action in this workshop. In particular, you will do the following experiments:

1. Figure out how a cell was made for the first time

2. Breakdown water into hydrogen and oxygen using electrical current

3. Figure out what is electroplating and how is it done.

4. Discover which liquids conduct electricity and which do not.

5. Build a water level indicator.

Please note that all these experiments will be done using very low voltage (3-6volts typically). So there is no shock hazard.

Eligibility: 5th to 8th grades

7. Sound

Hearing is considered second most important sense, after sight (try spending a day with cotton in your ears and your mouth taped ! ). The world around us is filled with sounds of all kinds, from aircraft noise to delicate notes of music to our own voices. What is sound after all? How is it produced?  What do we mean by terms such as frequency and loudness? In this workshop you will perform experiments to understand these. In these experiments you will get to use both modern technology (computers) and historical gadgets (a gramophone!). We will also understand some of the special properties of musical sounds and our own ears!

Eligibility: Students of classes 5th to 8th

8. Light and  Optics

In the microscopy workshop we started by experiencing the microscopic world with the help of lenses and microscopes. We  now turn our attention to the basics. In this workshop we will experiment with components of optical instruments, i.e. lenses and mirrors of various kinds. In other words we will figure out how these components bend light to help create wonderful instruments to observe the objects very small or very distant. 

Eligibility: Anyone above the age of 9 years

9. Experiments with Basic Building Blocks of Computers, Part-I

Digital gates are the bricks of which our computers are made of. Some examples are AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR and XOR gates. These gates are, in turn, used for making higher building blocks such as adders, memory etc. So if you wish to understand computers better you might as well begin by experimenting with these building blocks. In the process we will also learn binary number system which is used universally in all the computers. Believe me it is simple and fun!

Eligibility: 7th to 12th grade students

10. Experiments with Basic Building Blocks of Computers, Part-II

In this workshop we continue what we started in the part-I of this workshop. In this we will experiment with the higher building blocks of the computers such as memory, circuits for arithmetic, multiplexing  and  demultiplexers. 

Eligibility: 7th to 12th grade students and should have done part 1 of this workshop (i.e. #8 above)

11. Electronics and Sound

We live in an ocean of sound. We are told in schools that vibrations produce sound. Textbooks also tell us that sound has three basic characteristics: amplitude, frequency and wavelength. What do these term mean really? In this workshop you  will build an electronic circuit to generate sounds of different frequencies and amplitude and get a feel for sounds of different frequencies. You can take away the circuit built by you (optional).

Eligibility: 7th to 10th  grade student

12. Food Adulteration

We often read and hear about adulterated food i.e food items mixed with undesirable substances. Certain unscrupulous manufacturers or shopkeepers mix the food products with something that is lower in cost and looks just the same. Consumers’ well being is not their consideration. Join us in this workshop to understand how the adulteration is done and how it can be detected.

Eligibility: 5th -10th grade students

13. Color Mixing

In this workshop you will build and take away an electronic circuit which will clearly demonstrate what happens when you mix the primary color lights (i.e red, green and blue lights) in different proportions. Further you will also be experimenting with color pigments to understand the difference between colored light mixing and color pigment mixing.   (As a side benefit, you will also learn to assemble a simple electronic circuit in this workshop)

Eligibility: 5th -10th grade students

14. Water 

Water, the most abundant substance on earth, is also a very interesting substance.  In this workshop you will perform experiments to discover various interesting properties of water. For example, you will break it apart into its basic components, measure it boiling point (with and without impurities) and several other experiments. 

15. Fun with Arduino : Learn-by-building

Small microcontroller boards, such as Arduino, have made it possible for everyone, including young children, to build and enjoy a huge number of interesting projects that involve sensors, motors and actuators.  These projects range from intelligent toys to all the way to robotics and autonomous vehicles.  We have a large portfolio of workshops in this area too.  

For details related to any of the workshops please contact Sanjay at 9811305947