The venue of the event – Soul Kere, one of the rejuvenated lakes off Sarjapura Road
‘Faire’, in French, means ‘to do’ or ‘to make’ and that is at the heart of what Vigyana Habba aims to achieve. The fair was aimed to encourage a scientific spirit among children that questions, probes and finds solutions. It was not just a show and tell event – participants as well as visitors learned by “doing” stuff.
On Saturday, Aug 19th, 2017, over 44 teams participated in the second edition of the Soul Kere Science Fair – Vigyana Habba. The participating students were from grades 1 to 12 of various school and communities in the neighborhood of the lake. The event was organized by MAPSAS and supported by Genpact,(Platinum sponsor), Infosys Science Foundation (Gold sponsor), Biocon, United Way Bengaluru and BBMP lakes department. The winning teams have received prizes worth Rs 75,000 in total.
Judges included eminent experts like Dr. Sujata Virdhe, Former space scientist from ISRO; Dr. Lakshmi Saripalli, Astrophysicist at Raman Research Institute, Bangalore; Shubha Ramachandran, Water Sustainability Consultant with Biome Environmental Trust and Veena Srinivasan, ATREE. The prizes are sponsored by Infosys Science Foundation and Biocon.
The Science Faire entries were solicited from schools as well as open participants to compete in the four age groups. The Foundation School Gunjur, Primus Public school, National Public school HSR, Modern Public Englush School Ganganagar, Orchid International School Sarjapur, Freedom International School and Prakriya Green Wisdom School participated in this edition. Unless indicated specifically, the winning teams are from the open category. Winning teams are as follows:
Dr Veena Srinivasan visiting one of the experiment stalls
Elementary (std 1 – 3):
Winner: Fun with air and application of air-pressure in our daily life: Vedant Tandon, Angad S, Ishaan Garg
Runner up: Soil Erosion – Importance of plant growth to check loss of top soil: Pranika Baraya, Aashini Rastogi, Aditya Prabhu, Ananya Gupta
Junior (4-6):
Winner: Energy Transition – Mini replica of electric arc furnace – to convert electrical energy into heat energy: Jathin Gowda, Karshin D
Runner up: Permeable roads and pavements: Akshaj Singhal, Abhinav Muppuru, Varun Batra
Dr. Sujata Virdhe, Handing out the medals to the Junior category runner up team.
Intermediate (7-9):
Winner: Study of Bioplastics – Making substitute for plastic from various starch based biopolymers, their practical uses and decomposition: Monish Singhal, Pranav Muppuru, Anirudh Raghav
Runner up: Preparing a working instrument and live demo of Harmonograph from scrap material to create art: Sisir Lakkaraju, Nitya Bhoyar, Siddhartha Bhattacharjee, Dhrumi Maitra (School team: Bethany High Sarjapura)
Senior (10-12):
Winner: A working model to convert heat to electric energy– Thermoelectric generator: Aryan Kumar Jha, Aditya Choubey, Sai Charan, Dev Desai (School team: National public school HSR)
Entry to the event was free and open to all. The teams demonstrated live experiments that explored the topic ‘Science in everyday life’. Many innovative experiments, live models and demonstrations were done by the teams using scrap material and organic waste. Some of the experiments which stood out in the senior categories were the Low cost solar cell from Modern Public English School and the Smart garden from NPS, HSR.
Apart from the experiments, there were food stalls, organic products and services stalls and a plastic recycling workshop by Cilre.
About Soul Kere: Soul Kere (or Saul Kere) is one of the lakes in the chain that includes Kaikondrahalli Lake, Kasavanahalli Lake and Harlur Lake. An active citizen group, which set up the Mahadevpura Parisara Samrakshane Mattu Abhivrudhi Samiti (MAPSAS) Trust in 2011, has been working on Soul Kere alongside the BBMP, with support from United Way with contributions from corporate sponsor Genpact, taking care of day to day maintenance activities.
About MAPSAS: This is a trust formed by local citizens to maintain and look after some of the lakes in Bellandur Sarjapura region in South-East Bengaluru. Translated into English, the name means – Mahadevapura Environment Protection and Development Trust. While the BBMP takes care of the large infrastructure and capital costs for rejuvenating the lakes, MAPSAS is the community guardian of the lakes and oversees day to day maintenance activities post rejuvenation. The funds for maintenance are used for gardening, security, cleaning and annual deweeding. Funds are sought through voluntary donations from individuals and corporate donors.
More pictures and details shared on the Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/323391558083638/