34th Annual Report (2021-22)

89 The Zero Shadow Day (ZSD) C e l e b r a t i o n s w i t h K o t h a r i International School consisted of an inter-school event on August 21. Students from 7 schools across Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh presented their findings and experiences of the experiments they performed. Around 150 students and teachers attended the online event and Zero Shadow Day Event with Kothari International School - 17 July, 25 July, 21 August 2021 On the occasion of Hindi Diwas, the 14th of September 2021, IUCAA arranged 2 special sessions in Hindi. Prof. Somak Raychaudhury and Prof. Durgesh Tripathi welcomed and introduced the panel followed by a talk by Prof. Subhadeep De on “Sundial to Atomic Clock: For Accurate Time Keeping and Fundamental Science”. Hindi Diwas learnt about the ZSD event. Mr Samir Dhurde was invited as a guest to mark the culmination of the event. The celebrations concluded with an interactive sessionwith the students. The event was designed and coordinated by Sonal Thorve with the help of teacher organisers. The day consisted of talks by Prof. Amit Pathak on “Largest Atoms in the Universe” and Prof. Durgesh Tripathi on “An overview of Hindi Pakhwada, a 15-day program full of Hindi Activities”. The viewers indulged in an interactive Q&A session at the end of the talks. October 16th was celebrated as “International Observe theMoon Night” all over the world, and as a part of this, IUCAA SciPOP arranged 2 sessions on “Observing the Moon” as well as “Telescopic Viewing of the Moon” that were coordinated by Atharva Pathak and Tushar Purohit. About 300 people joined this event. th International Observe the Moon Night - 16 October LIGO-India - Education and Public Outreach (LIEPO) organised a series of th th public outreach activities from 24 to 26 November 2021 in the region surrounding the LIGO-India site. An introductory GW talk was conducted at the ZP Girls High School (Hingoli), ABM English School (Hingoli), ZP High School (Puyana) and Saraswati Foundation Academy (Hingoli). It included a d emon s t r a t i on o f t he M i c he l s on Interferometer for explaining the basic working principle of gravitational-wave th th Outreach in Hingoli - 24 to 26 November 2021 detectors like LIGO. This was followed by a talk on the basics of telescopes. More than 330 secondary school students were present for the talk. A telescope training session was conducted at the ZP High School in Kondhur village. The school teachers were instructed about the best practices of handling and using a telescope in reference to a 6-inch Dobsonian telescope that they had recently procured. A stargazing sessionwas conducted after this whichwas open to the general public. Stargazing sessions were also conducted at the ZP High School (Puyana) and Saraswati Foundation Academy (Hingoli). They received an overwhelming response with more than 1250 people attending. These comprised secondary school students and the general public. The activities were coordinated by Ankit Bhandari (LIEPO Assistant at IUCAA) with help from freelance telescope resource person Tushar Purohit.