Khagol_114

No. 114 - April 2018 11 The National Science Day and Open Day events saw a footfall of about 7,000 odd people, who visited IUCAA in the day sessions, and a whopping about 1,800 odd people who attended the skywatching at night! As per tradition, there were events for school students prior to the Open Day. IUCAA Public Outreach personnel conducted a science quiz along with essay writing, and drawing competitions for the rural students of the Ambegaon Taluka on February 3, 2018. Pratik Dabhade, Pranoti Panchbhai and Siddharth Maharana enthusiastically encouraged students from 33 rural schools, who competed at the venue generously provided by the NewEnglish School, Landewadi. Alot of help also came from the IUCAAGirawali Observatory staff, Nilesh Pokharkar along with others. On February 24, 2018, about 380 students from 63 schools in Pune city responded to IUCAA’s invitation, and participated in another set of inter-school competitions. Students from classes 8 to 10 took part in the drawing, essay, poetry and science quiz competitions. A. N. Ramaprakash (IUCAA) gave an interactive talk to the teachers, who accompanied the students.After the finals of the quiz competition, all winning students received their prizes fromSomak Raychaudhuri, which included the students from the rural schools, who were specially invited to IUCAA for a visit that day. All the students were enthused and also very happy to have a chance to interact with the IUCAA scientists during theseNational ScienceDay celebrations.