Khagol_115

No. 115 - July 2018 07 IUCAA Visit and Sky Watch for Rural Teachers A group of 100 teachers from different rural parts of Maharashtra visited IUCAA on June 7, 2018 under a Teachers' Training Programme, organised by Saka l NIE and I I SER - Pune . Somak Raychaudhury (Director, IUCAA) interacted with these teachers, sharing information about IUCAA and the mega-projects in progress. Sonal Thorve talked about the astronomy included in school textbooks and conducted a sky-watching session. light to theworking of radio telescopes. Therewere also some exciting goal oriented projects, like, investigating the time period of a bar pendulum, moment of inertia and principle of conservation of momentum using a modified form of the ballistic pendulum, and experimenting with the Lissajaous pa erns. During the event, the students also got an opportunity to interact with IUCAA faculty. Kaustubh Vaghmare, Somak Raychaudhuri, A. N. Ramaprakash and Aseem Paranjape (all from IUCAA) spent some time at the MVS to answer the questions of the students in a friendly manner, and gave some career advice. The IUCAA main library and the facilities of the MVS, like, the library, computer section, and workshop were made available to the students, who themselves built the equipments using tools from the workshop under the guidance of Maharudra Mate (IUCAA). At the end of every week, sky-watching sessions were organized for the participants and their parents. In these sessions, the students practically used their sky-map reading knowledge gained during the week to locate the stars and constellations. On the last working day of every batch, the students submi ed reports of the experimental work done by them, and concluded their week with well designed presentations, a ended by other students and IUCAA academics. On May 14, 2018, the Zero Shadow Day for Pune was also celebrated. The School Students’ Summer Programme and Astronomy Camp were coordinated by Samir Dhurde and Sonal Thorve, with the help of other MVS personnel.