Doing is understanding: science fun in India

In India, as in many countries, the main focus in science classrooms is on exams rather than musing on the fascinating concepts and understanding of the world that science offers. This can mean that students lose interest in studying science -a problem that is further hampered where there is a lack of facilities, expertise or mentors. We started the 'Science is fun' outreach programme to address these problems. The 15-person team, led by undergraduate and research scientists, conducted four workshops with underprivileged children in Indian primary and secondary schools during December 2014 and January 2015. The workshops explored basic science concepts, reinforced by hands-on experiments using readily available materials. They were generally successful, with students keen to participate and motivated to learn more after the workshops. We were also pleasantly surprised to see students engaging with new concepts and not hesitating to participate in the discussions. We tried to ensure teachers were central to the activities, and also designed the experiments to be easily repeatable so that teachers could incorporate them into their own lessons once the workshops were over. In this article, we describe three of our successful activities: building a periscope and a digital microscope, and two experiments based on the physical gas laws. All are cheap and easy to perform, yet reveal interesting scientific principles. Each activity takes about an hour.