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Interview with Prathul

A volunteer named prathul visited STEMLAND about 5 months ago.

He was supporting the English content team in improving children’s english skills. He also handled Geography classes for 8th graders at Isai Ambalam.

Who is Prathul ?

A young energetic man who once was a fashion designer living a luxurious life and then all of a sudden left this ordinary life to explore the world. He always believed that there is more to life than just making money, having high social status, and high paying career. There was a part of him that wanted the adrenaline rush, adventure and curiosity. The man who has explored  all the continents and many countries with just his backpack.

For more info visit:  https://backpackwithprat.com/

Prathul’s  message :
Some places leave an inedible mark on our lives. Auroville was and will always be that place that I would keep coming back to… It resonates my love for learning and living…
Though I’ve come to Auroville few times in the past, this time it has been the start of a new chapter in my life. I couldn’t have asked for a more gratifying, loving, resourceful and humbling 5 months. 5 months!!! The longest I have ever been in a place… And I owe it all to the wonderful people I met here, the initiatives I have been a part of, the people I worked with, the immense knowledge that I have gained, the laughs we shared…. And so much more. I hope I will come back soon to learn, contribute and grow more together.
Thank you. My heart is full and overwhelmed with all that I have received. Thank you. Thank you.

 

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Session with Ravi Aluganthi

~ Abilash

During the Ravi Aluganthi session we worked on mathematical projects which shows off the concept of transverse angles.

Through this we learned some mathematical concepts, how to use the tools efficiently and helped me impove my hands-on skills. It helped me to revisit and understand the interior and exterior angles of a parallelogram.

I was able to connect with the concepts when seeing the model visually, which also increased my confidence on hands-on skills. I express my gratitude to Ravi Aluganthi for creating the opportunity and space with us.

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Hands on Session on Math Concepts

~ Vimal & Praba

An interactive and engaging session was held for the STEM Land  mathematics teacher for showing Off Math concepts with Mr.Ravi Aluganthi. We as a team of Two worked on building a model to demonstrate the Pythagoras Theorem. We learnt the tools of trade of model building. Also learnt about the techniques for building the model. Through this session, we understand the mathematical concepts in a better manner than through the textbooks. We shall work on building the same kind of models to demonstrate the difficult to show math topics to enable the kids learn easier. We are very grateful to Mr.Ravi for his valuable support and help in our learning path.

 

 

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Powers of Three

-Pratap & Logeshwari

Children from 8th  in Udavi were learning about the powers and exponents.  In order to demonstrate powers of three. I was thinking about how to make the cubes and I had a question of with what materials do I need to make.

Image result for dienes blocks

Finally, I thought of making the cube using Dienes blocks. I took all the 10 cm rods and started. making making the cubes. I wanted to show  31  to  35.

I took a 10 cm rod and cut them into 3 pieces of  3 cm. I stuck them together to get 3^2. when I add three of the 3^2 I get 3^3.

This the visual representation of 3^1

 

 

 

 

 

This the visual representation of 3^2
 This the visual representation of 3^3

This the visual representation of 3^4

This the visual representation of 3^5

Here are some simple rules to use with exponents.

  1. a1 = a
    Any number raised to the power of one equals the number itself.
  2. For any number a, except 0, a0 = 1
    Any number raised to the power of zero, except zero, equals one.
  3. For any numbers a, b, and c,
    ab x ac = ab+c
    This multiplication rule tells us that we can simply add the exponents when multiplying two powers with the same base.

The above is a visualizing 3 power n in three dimensions. We did the same for two-dimension also.

We had a session with Ravi Alungati with all the teachers who work on Mathematics. Everyone chose their own topic that they are working on. Pratap and I chose powers since the eighth graders are working on it. We built these two dimensions of representation using the cardboard. We marked the cardboard cut them and painted them in alternate colors.

Two-dimension model for 3^2
Two_dimenstion model for 3^3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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STEMland Activity

~Saranya and Poovizhi

I and 7th grade children worked on Aravind Gupta toys. I and  Pranauv watched video on how to make puppet toy and we worked on it together  and we able to complete it. Here are the some snapshot of puppet.

 

 

 

 

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NON NEWTONIAN FLUID

~ Madhavan, Arun

A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid that does not follow Newton’s law of viscosity, i.e., constant viscosity independent of stress. In non-Newtonian fluids, viscosity can change when under force to either more liquid or more solid. [more..]

PREPARATION : 

Preparation of the non Newtonian liquid:

Needed materials:

  1. Corn powder (50 gm)
  2. Water (50 ml)
  3. Shampoo (5 ml)
  4. Honey (1 table spoon)

Mix all the ingredients slowly and make sure you mix them properly. Mixing might be a little harder and might take around 10 to 15 minutes.

WORKING :

After the preparation of the liquid ,the surface looks like a liquid. When one puts a finger slowly into the liquid it will go inside. When we increase the speed of our hand our finger will not go inside. Please check the video below. We should this to the school children.

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Scratch project on cube

~ ranjith

Here I have created project to show that solid shapes is made up of infinity sheet of surface in scratch. It helps children to understand the relation between area of square and volume of cube by looking at this program.

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/368412131

Run this program in turbo mode “press: shift + green flag ”

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Arduino Extension for Scratch 3.0

Scratch 3.0 doesnot have the standard extension to interface with the popular open source physical computing platforms like Arduino. An extension was build to communicate with the arduino platform. Arduino Uno needs to be flashed with the firmata firmware from the examples. The scratch communicates with the arduino through a intermediate tool developed using the pyfirmata library of the python. This tool helps the kids to learn physical computing concepts easily. This same framework can be used for research on Human Computer Interaction. Also for building tangible devices. The customized version of the Scratch 3.0 and the Scratch linking software called ScratchBridge is released in the github page:https://github.com/vimal-b/scratch4arduino/releases/tag/1%2C0

 

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Scratch Madala at Aikiyam school

Pratap

This week me and Murali went to Aikiyam to teach shapes using scratch. We started with the drawing a straight line. Then asked children to draw a triangle . Children took some time and then figured out the angle to draw a triangle. Then we asked them to draw the following shapes like square, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon , octagon. Then using this shapes we asked then to draw mandala. Children were interested to  draw their own mandalas . Children understood the concept of repeat loop. They were familiar with the  pen function in the scratch. Children were able to connect the angles for different shapes.


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Visualising solid shapes

We,8th graders at Isai Ambalam school children started a lesson called visualising solid shapes in mathematics. We used sodo cubes to understand different views of  a solid shape.  Children have been divided into four groups. 20 sodo cubes were given to each group. One child from each group should make a solid shape using 20 cubes and should draw the front view, side view and top view. He has to show this views to his partner without showing the shape.The other person should make the same model by seeing drawings. Children enjoyed this activity. They were able to draw the different views of solid shapes and also make the shapes by seeing the views. But the question they had was how to draw the views if the model has holes. Then they came to the conclusion of using dotted lines to represent the holes.