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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.
Curiosity and a desire to explore have driven scientists and engineers to spend long hours in the laboratories. Don’t we see children doing the same when they are playing, either 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 10 years). Can learning be far behind then?
The club runs its workshops during weekends and vacations. Please see the list below for an indicative list of workshop topics. Minimum number of participants in any workshop is two (max 5-6 in most cases). Contact us if you wish to explore a topic from school physics or chemistry hands-on, or need help with your science project.
Scheduled Workshops:
Saturday: 4-6 pm
Sunday : 4-6 pm
(Other days/times possible with prior appointment)
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
Topics of Workshops conducted earlier
1. Rip it apart
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
2. Guesstimation (Guess + Estimation)
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 box of box of sweets is actually 1Kg or is it less? How do we go about improving this ability?
In this workshop we will play a set of games involving dimensions(length, width, height and radius), weight and volume of common objects. In the process we hope to improve our guessing and estimating abilities.
Eligibility: Anyone above the age of 8 years
Duration: 1 hour
3. Guesstimation-II (Guess + Estimation)
In the second part of guesstimation workshop you will deal with estimation of audio frequencies, fragrances and weight 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
Duration: 1.5 hour
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
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
Duration: 2.5 hours
7. Sound
Hearing is considered second most important sense, after sight (try spending a day with cotton in your ears and your mouth taped J ).
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
Duration: 2.5 hours
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
Duration: 2 hours
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)
Duration: 2.5 hours
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
Duration: 2.5 hours
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
Duration: 3 hours
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
Duration: 2.5 hours
14. Water
Water, the most common substance on earth, is also a very interesting substance. In this workshop you will perform experiments to discover various interesting properties of water. You will break it apart into its basic components, measure it boiling point (with and without impurities) and several other experiments. Welcome aboard.....fun guaranteed.
For details related to any of the workshops please contact Sanjay at 9811305947
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