Events

Two Magical Days at ICTS With the Centre for Creative Learning

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An account of the numerous experiences during a visit by the team.
BY ANUGRAHA A & ROSHINI GEORGE

ICTS hosted the team from the Centre for Creative Learning (CCL) team at IIT Gandhinagar (IIT-GN), who facilitated two back-to-back events at ICTS: Magical STEM (PRISM 4) and building the Geoshpere@ICTS on the 2nd and 4th of December, 2023, respectively. Indeed, they were two magical days spent doing hands-on experiments and lots of learning.

Magical STEM (PRISM 4)

The event was open to school-going children and their parents. 

Dr Jyothi Krishnan from CCL kicked off the day with her interactive session. Jyothi has always been interested in games and has gotten everyone in her life involved with games. Games have mathematics in almost every corner!

Photograph by Sumukh A S.

In her talk, first, she played with numbers over a game and got the stage rolling.

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.

Then, she explained what mathematics without numbers could be like.

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.

She fielded many questions from the young minds.

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.

After lunch, Manish Jain took over. He mentioned that the CCL was created seven years ago to engage and inspire children and adults.

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.

The CCL at IIT Gandhinagar plays various games, conducts experiments, and explores the science behind them. The team looks at non-intuitive ways of looking at mathematics, exploring some problems they haven’t yet found an answer to!

Manish demonstrated many of these hands-on experiments to the audience. The audience also did all the experiments on their own. A lot of the toys explained the principles of sound.

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.

He asked the students and parents to make toys like straw flutes, water sprinklers, and bugles using PVC pipes. He explained the physics behind each toy.

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.

Manish did hands-on experiments with paper explaining geometrical properties. He gave the audience multiple challenges and later showed how to meet them.

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.

He explained the phenomenon of coloured shadows after switching off the lights at the auditorium to demonstrate why red, green, and blue are primary colours.

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.

Courses at IIT-GN are now using some of these toys to explain master’s mathematics, added Manish. Jyothi handled the last session of the day. In this session, participants carved geometric shapes on cucumbers.

Geosphere@ICTS

The event was open to all members at ICTS.

It started with a talk by Jyothi and Manish on machines the Centre for Creative Learning (CCL) team has built at IIT-GN, including the Integration Machine and the Enigma Machine. The CCL is the only lab in India with a real replica of the Enigma Machine, which led to the invention of the first computer.

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.

Then, ICTS members built the Geosphere under the guidance of Manish Jain and Rakesh Pachaya from CCL. Rakesh has designed many puzzles at CCL, said Manish, and is the only person in the lab who can solve some of them!

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.

The session started at 11:30 AM and went on till 7:30 PM. Since there are no perfect spheres in nature, the shape the members built was modelled on a fullerene, an allotrope of carbon.

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.

The Geosphere consists of bamboo sticks, which the ICTS members weaved together in the shapes of hexagons (110 in number) and pentagons (12). Then, they stitched all these shapes to form the structure resembling fullerene, the roughly spherical geosphere that holds itself against its weight. The bamboo sticks were not all the same size, which was on purpose to create the round shape. The weaving was an intricate task demanding tremendous patience.

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.

The ICTS community thanks the CCL team for the fantastic addition to the campus.

  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
  • Photograph by Sumukh A S.
Header photograph by Sumukh A S.

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