The Inspiration story of Straw Spray – Part 1

~ Naveen and Abilash

It was Abilash’s first class in Auroville Schools. He had asked me what would be a good place to start making science projects with small children. I said that something fun and interesting will make the children curious to work on. Then we decided to make a Straw Spray (Aravind Gupta toys – Toys from Trash).

So, at Isaiambalam school Abilash and I were in the process of making the straw spray. After completing the process, I was demonstrating how the straw spray works, to Abilash. Athiyaman and Aasish from 6th Grade came over and asked us what we had made, and how to make it. I just showed them the model that we had built using straws and thermocol.

I asked them how the water was pulled upwards?

They answered,“You are sucking the water upwards”

I again demonstrated it to them and said, “Look carefully I am not sucking the water upwards, I am blowing only the air.”

Athiyaman said that as I blow, the water is being pulled upwards but he did not know why.

The next morning, I was having breakfast when Athiyaman came to me and said that the straw spray that he had made was not working. I asked him how he made it because I did not show him how to make it. I had only shown him the completed model. He said he saw the model and made one like that at his house by himself and showed it to me. Then as it was time for his morning assembly he left the model he made with me and went to the morning prayer. I also left to my class.

Again, in the afternoon he had come to me and asked whether I made the straw spray work. In the morning, I had forgotten the straw spray model he gave me and left it in the dining hall itself. I went with him and found it in the corner of the table where I had my breakfast.

Then I looked at the model and made some modifications to make it work. Then it worked. I explained to him the Bernoulli’s principle and told him that “as we blow the air, the air moves faster making the pressure of the air low and the water moves in the upward direction as atoms move from high pressure to low pressure.”

I was happy that day because I found a child inspired to work on his own. Then only I realized that when I do my best and with myself fully involved in a thing it will reach out.

Automatic street light using LDR

~Ranjith, Abilash

While preparing for the electronics class. we took “Automatic street light using LDR” as the circuit, where “LED” turns ON in dark, and turns OFF in bright place.

After giving the circuit connection, the LED didn’t turn OFF when it was bright. So we started analyzing the circuit, then we found out that, the R1 resistor was low when compared to the resistance of the LDR under the brightness.

We calculated the resistor value of R1, by assuming that

  1. Vbe = 0.6v was needed to turn ON the “transistor 1”.
  2. Resistance of LDR = 180 kΩ under minimum light for which LED should be OFF (if we further reduced the light, resistance will increase, then “LED” should turn ON and “transistor 1” should turns OFF).

From the calculation, we got that R1 = 13.17 kΩ, we approximate it to 10 kΩ.

Finally we made it to work.

Cast Metal Brain Teasers Puzzles

~Sandhiya, Arun

In STEMland as one of the activity, children were asked to solve metal puzzles. The activity was fun. 3rd-grade children were interested and curious to solve these puzzles. There were divided into 8 groups, 2 children in each. The task was to solve the puzzles within the given time.

 

Children were engaged and curious about the task was given to them. After finishing their task, they supported each other. They also shared the puzzles they were able to solve to others.

Vacuum Lift

~ Abilash.S

This week the students of Auroville schools did a project on Vacuum lift. The task was to lift the glass jar with the use of balloon and not with the hand. When they first set the balloon on top of the jar, the air pressure outside the jar and the air pressure inside the jar were the same. As they lit a small piece of paper and dropped it inside the jar, heat was created inside it and was pushing its way out of the jar. This hot air pushing out past the balloon caused the balloon to wiggle. However, while hot air was going out, no new air was able to coming in (the balloon works like a one-way valve, letting air out but not in). So now there was less air, less stuff, in the jar. With less stuff taking up space in the jar, the pressure inside the jar was less than it used to be, that is, less than the air pressure outside the jar. Since the pressure outside the jar was greater than the pressure inside the jar, a part of the balloon was sucked into the jar due to vacuum. And now the students were able to lift the jar up by holding the balloon from its top.

mysql client documentation-windows

~Sandhiya

What is mysqlclient?

The client package also comes with utilities that allow you to easily backup/restore data and administer the server.

Install mysqlclient for windows

Go to the link: https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#mysqlclient

Download the file which version supported your system

Download the file: mysqlclient-1.4.4-cp37-cp37m-win32.whl

open the terminal: type pip install mysqlclient-1.4.4-cp37-cp37m-win32.whl

 

Reflection On One-Day Vipaasana Course

~Saranya

One day Vipaasana Course Reflection:

Buddha

By attending this one day course I enjoyed the real peace and harmony. I understood through my own experience the meaning of Dhamma, it means the universal flow of nature and impermanence. Whatever sensation I felt in my body I was able to accept it and not react to it with either craving or aversion. That helped me to train the habit pattern of my unconscious mind and come out of my misery. In the One Day Course, I shared my peace and harmony with others with Metta.

I acknowledge Sanjeev and Deven for creating the space for us to grow and I will use it in my life.

 

Art of Meditation

Dhruva’s step mother: If you want to sit on your father’s lap, you should ask God to make you be born as my son.

Dhruva’s step mother: If you want to sit on your father’s lap, you should ask God to make you be born as my son.

Dhruva tells his mother everything that happened.
Mother, I was told to ask God for permission to sit on father’s lap.

Mother: Yes, my child, you ask Vishnu.
Dhruva: Where will I find him, Mother?
Mother: I have heard people meditate on him in silent, deep forests.

Dhruva meets Narada on the way to the forest.

Dhruva meditated for months. He meditated on Vishnu in his heart. He forgot to take food and even water.

O Lord, I want to sing your glory. I don’t have the knowledge to compose a song. Please grant me the knowledge.

And Dhruva became the Dhruva nakshatram.
The star that is steady, it never moves. May we all learn from him.

Importance of culture in Mental and Cognitive education:

~Ranjith, Saranya

Mental and Cognitive education:

Mental and cognitive education can be done by learning about ourselves and the world around us.

We grow in learning about ourselves by respecting our parents, our teachers, and our elders. They support us and provide not only for our basic physical needs but also our mental, intellectual, moral and spiritual needs.

Culture is what we have, i.e. our thought, our expressions, our approach towards life, etc. It has emerged out of collective thinking and is subject to continuous modification by our ancestor’s thoughts which are accepted by society. Swamiji further says, “Peoples in the nation should not only be given the education to make them self-reliant, but also ideas, moral training, and understanding of their great history so that can be motivated to work for their own salvation. Furthermore, they must be given back their culture, without which there is no hope for sustainable progress.

To respect others we need to know about ourselves and we should love our country, our culture, and our ancestors. Cultural plays a major role to develop a better understanding of the world and also helps us to understand ourselves. This helps us develop respect for what we have and grow in self-confidence. It also helps us appreciate that other people have similarly other cultures and environment that have socialized them. Only with real self-confidence will we be able to respect others.

We can’t build a nation without understanding how things work in the world. Culture and History gives us a detailed picture of how society, technology, and government worked way back when so that we can better understand how it works now. It also helps us determine how to approach the future, as it allows us to learn from our past mistakes (and triumphs) as a society.

When we do the above we will treat people equally, with trust, love, regard, and respect. This should be given to all levels and all type of people regardless of any physical, mental, sexual, social, economic or family background.

A story shared at our group:

During Thane cyclone, people lost their homes and water flooded many homes. At that time, even basic needs were difficult to meet. Some compassionate people in this world provided these basic needs – food, clothing, and shelter. These people have done this as a service without wanting to be recognized. I have come to understand that when we have trouble others express their love towards us. Henceforth we must express our love to all levels of people, not only that we should do our best to serve people.

continue ……………… in the next blog

 

 

 

Responsive Website using HTML, CSS & JavaScript over two weekends

~ Poovizhi and Murali
We had an intense course offered at STEM land by Umang Doctor who has over 18 years of experience in software development and digital technologies.

10 people participated in the course and we learnt

– Practical experience of responsive website development primarily using JavaScript
– Understanding of next steps required to develop further skills in web development
The course included:
HTML 5, CSS 3, ES6, Bootstrap 4
JavaScript basics, Data structures using JavaScript, JavaScript modules, OOPS,Debugging using Chrome
We went through the exercises in FreeCode camp https://learn.freecodecamp.org/  and played games in https://flexboxfroggy.com/ to recall flexbox in CSS.