Khagol_114

No. 114 - April 2018 14 Other Regular Events The Public Outreach groups conducted 2 science toys workshops, 2 basic astronomy workshops, 2 campus visits, and 4 sky- watcheswith an approximate reach to 700 people. A group of faculty members and staff from the Centre for Education, Innovation and Action Research, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, who are inclined towards academic writing, visited IUCAA Science Centre on January 18, 2018. Samir Dhurde (IUCAA) shared information about IUCAA Science Outreach Programme, and demonstrated how does a digital mediumhelp in this. On the occasion of Vernal Equinox on March 21, 2018, Shivom Gupta (IUCAA) coordinated an event for school students from classess 8 to 11, who performed an experiment to measure the circumference of the earth by using shortest shadow method. The method was first used by Eratosthenes (276 BC - 194 BC), a Greek mathematician, geographer and astronomer in 240 Equinox Event BC. About 37 students from 9 schools in Pune participated in this activity. From the noon to the hot sunny afternoon, the students patiently and curiously traced the shadows of gnomons provided to them for more than 1.5 hours to get the shortest shadow, and hence determined the earth's circumference.