We had a fun opening with the children of Isai Ambalam School putting up a mini fair with blindfold bursting of balloons, pick out the right items (and components), dropping the coin in a bucket of water to get to target in the center of the bucket, bun eater and a recent addition the finch robot game. One of the students was also displaying the scratch programs they had written for fun and to learn various mathematical concepts.
A short speech from Sanjeev was followed by the demonstration of SpeeDe our first project that detects the instantaneous speed (actually speed averaged over 6 cm) of an objects that falls through it. The project can help children understand the speed of objects dropping to the ground, the speed of a punch/kick, etc. The arduino based project used a couple of modified laser pointers and print the speed in m/s & km/hr on a 16×2 display mounted on a frame. More about the project and step by step construction will be available soon under projects.
This followed lighting floating candles in a large bronze vessel with water. The kolam around the vessel made this an interesting affair as well and children and adults put in their candles into the water.
We wrapped up with samosas (from Ganesh Shree in Pondy), cookies, fruits and tea. The children who had diligently kept their stalls till then dived into the snacks as well. Back at school they were raving about the samosas. There is a little project they have undertaken to draw a pie chart for the samosas that they all ate using Scratch.