Hey guys, The evening of the 10th of March turned out to be more memorable than what I imagined it would be at Hemant's place, Krishnanagra apartments, Domlur. We were scheduled to have the outreach for the sceond time and what a program we had!! Its possibly included in those little moment which make life worth living a second time. We were at Krishnanagar at about 7 and even as I entered the venue I could see the crowd milling around the mighty 12 inch which was pointing to the evening star, obviously much to the delight of the tiny tots who were bubbling over with enthusiasm, the average age group was from 6- 12 years and the elder ones were showing off their knowlegde about how the sun was a star and et al.
Well to star off I was off limits of the telescope as Hemant took full charge of te area, so I turned my attention to the kiddies who were pointing out to all the nine planets in the solar system (LOL). Well it is encouraging to note that theses kids actually have a penchant for visual obsrevation in the sense that they actually wanted to know the names of stars and stuff, albeit even if it was for just showing off to the younger kids. So I went about pointing te sky and correcting the postions of the planets and in the process I was able to give them some info about wahta planet was and why they were so et al. There was obviously a volley of questions to all my explanations and again what amazed me was the logical connectivity they were making at all my claims, there was evidently a very logical mind behind the playful pigtails!! Getting on I gave them some dub on stars and realized early that I had to go back to pre school to able to explain them the complicated concepts of fusion and the like, given my penchant for gab and the fact that I had a willing audiendce just fueled my enthu. The kids listened attentively and were actually asking advanced questions like "why is it that we see the stars so small and the sun so big", considering their age I feel these questions betray their sense of wonderment and importantly reflect their interest in the subject. I did persistently get the feeling that the syllabi and teaching appproaoch that was puuting these little minds through a mug routine was robbing us of some really exciting minds. Furthering on, the observatiosn were interspersed with my talks on the stars and nebulae and it actually came to point where they stopped looking through the scope and actually sat down folded legs on the floor to listen, which actually amused me, considering the theory that theoritical physics was taking its last steps!!! The kids were still showering me with questions and I actually had to hold out the stop card when it came to soem serious questiosn like "Why is Venus going ulta" which needed some depth of understanding of theoritical physics. To sum it all up, I really feel these kids are all pretty smart and definitely would make very good resreach fellows, I just hope they sustain their curiosity and participate in all of BAS's events, signing off.
Happy clear skies ,
Rakesh