Archives at NCBS: Public Lecture Series
https://www.ncbs.res.in/events/apls
61st edition
 
Monthly talks framed around explorations in and around archives. Discussions by artists, archivists, academics, lawyers, teachers, journalists and others.
 
Making Things, Doing Science 
 
Arvind Gupta
 
Friday, Mar 15, 2024. 5:00pm.
Lecture Hall – 1 (Haapus), NCBS
 
 
Abstract:
Before children can understand a thing, they need experience: seeing, touching, hearing, tasting, smelling, choosing, arranging, putting things together, and taking things apart. Children need to experiment with real things available in their milieu. In numerous schools in India, science is often learnt by rote, by mugging up definitions and formulae and spitting them out in the exams. Very few children dirty their hands on making simple models. This lecture will demonstrate the possibilities of doing fun science using simple materials. Apart from demonstrating the possibilities of doing fun science using simple materials, this lecture will also dwell on the history of activity based science.
 
 
Bio:
Arvind Gupta did a B. Tech from IIT, Kanpur (1975), and then left a corporate job to pursue a passion that became a life-long quest: making science fun for children (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Gupta). He has written 24 books on science activities, translated over 1000 books into Hindi and presented 125 films on science activities on Doordarshan.  He worked at the Children’s Science Center at IUCAA, Pune for 11 years. The Centre produced 8700 short (2-minute) videos on simple experiments and science toys in 20 different languages. The videos have been viewed by over 100 million children worldwide. Every day, thousands of books are downloaded from his popular website, http://arvindguptatoys.com. He has received many honours including the Distinguished Alumnus Award of IIT/Kanpur and the Padma Shri. Also view: http://www.ted.com/talks/arvind_gupta_turning_trash_into_toys_for_learni...