My Science School

The digital revolution has penetrated extensively across the country, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The biggest beneficiaries of the use of technology have been students.

From Wordle to Google classroom, to reels and YouTube channels the digital revolution that began in India in the 90s has penetrated extensively across the country, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Every person with a smartphone is now connected globally via the Internet and has some input (whether in the form of text. photos, videos, audios and charts) to share with the public at large.

The biggest beneficiaries of the use of technology have been the student community. Even before the pandemic most academic institutions had shifted their attention to collaborative instruction by introducing audio-visual elements. However, the forms of communication and collaboration that occurred in online teaching is something that was previously unheard of.

Easy access to information

For years, the teacher was considered the primary source of information and the learners passively received it. This model is still very much in evidence today. However, because of the access to information and educational opportunities that technology offers, the teacher now plays the role of a guide and mentor. Students these days take more responsibility for their own learning, using technology to gather relevant information. They collaborate on group projects using technology-based tools such as wikis and Google docs.

Some of the strongest technology buzzwords in recent years are distance learning, big data, machine learning and Internet of Things (IoT). Eventually, it all boils down to integrating technology into our lives, making learning easier.

Educators bring valuable knowledge to learners, both in theory and in real life. But smart educators are those who can create lessons, enabled by technology, and based on what students want to learn. For instance, eLearning is education or training delivered electronically. It can be in the form of slide-based online activities or an online course that helps a business train employees in necessary skills. This content is delivered to learners through computers, laptops, tablets or smartphones. The decision-making factor, in this scenario, encourages learners to make their own choices on what they want to study next.

New-age scenario

Video-assisted learning is another interesting trend. In this case, animated videos are used to teach lessons, making content easier to understand. Such videos reduce a teacher's workload and are believed to improve the performance of students.

Then there is blockchain technology which is used in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and ePortfolios to verify skills and knowledge. The Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in blockchain is beneficial when it comes to data storage. Every time new data is added, it adds another "block" to the system, so the storage is technically limitless.

From hospitals to newsrooms, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now a ubiquitous presence. Al can automate basic activities in education, like grading. It is now possible for teachers to automate grading when it comes to multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions. Next comes immersive learning with VR and AR. The classroom experience has undergone a tremendous change since the introduction of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) in education. The rise in demand for experiential learning has led to a push in the development of learning with VR and AR. The former provides a constructed reality, while AR gives an enhanced view of a real image. Thus, they help explain complex concepts that plain images or even a lab's hands-on experiments cannot do.

Learning with creativity

STEM  programmes are now STEAM, with the inclusion of Art. This new trend offers meaningful science, technology, engineering, art and math content to solve real-world problems through hands-on learning activities and creative design. It also creates a safe environment for learners to express and experience their ideas while thinking outside the box.

*STEM  programmes are designed to develop a learners skills in science, technology, engineering and maths.

Did you know

Many educational institutes have started using social media as a communication tool in which students can share study materials, discuss with others in a group, or easily comment on someone else's post.

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The Wright brothers need no introduction. Best known for achieving the first powered heavier-than-air craft flight, the Wright brothers obtained the patent for a "Flying Machine" on May 22, 1906.

The names of Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright will forever be intertwined with the history of flying machines. For, the Wright brothers were the first to achieve the flight of a powered heavier-than-air craft.

 The elder of the two, Wilbur, was born in 1867 and was the third child in the Wright family. Orville was the sixth of seven children that his parents had. The seeds for an idea about flying were sown when Wilbur and Orville were still two young boys.

A toy that inspires

Their mother gave them a toy helicopter to play with. This little piece of wood that had two rubber bands to turn a propeller laid the foundation for a lifetime's work.

Drawn towards flying, the Wright brothers spent plenty of time observing birds in flight. This allowed them to notice that lift was created when birds soared into the wind and the air flowed over the curved surface of their wings. They use this knowledge to build kites, which they even sold to their friends.

Cycling to aviation

As avid cyclists, Wilbur and Orville owned a bicycle shop as adults. Despite the fact that they had less than 10 years of combined high school education, the experience of building bicycles provided them the understanding of early engine design - be it using chains, sprockets, or ball bearings.

Years of riding a bicycle gave them ideas as to how they could control and balance an aircraft. Add to this the countless hours that they had spent observing flight in nature and they had the necessary knowledge and interest to get started.

By 1899, the Wright brothers ventured into flying. Between 1900 and 1902, they researched every aspect of flight, from roll, pitch, and yaw to the rudder, elevator, and performance of the wing. In order to test the aerodynamic qualities of wing models, they even developed the first wind tunnel. The brothers also worked on their own piloting skills by making over a thousand flights on a series of gliders at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Master a control system

Their years of trial and error allowed them to master their glider in all three axes of flight: pitch, roll, and yaw. While the pitch was operated by a forward elevator, their breakthrough discovery included the simultaneous use of roll control with wing-warping and yaw control with a rear rudder.

Even though they had just started conducting experiments with propellers and begun to build their own engines, they applied for a patent in March 1903 for their control system. They were granted U.S. Patent 821,393 for a "Flying Machine" on May 22, 1906. This patent is significant as it laid down a useful and modern means of controlling a flying machine, regardless of whether it was powered or not.

Not ones to be kept waiting, the Wright brothers had already made the first free, controlled, and sustained flights in a powered, heavier-than-air craft on a chilly day at Kitty Hawk, on December 17, 1903. With just a handful of others witnessing history, Orville stayed 12 seconds in the air and flew 120 feet in the first trial at 10.35 a.m. In the fourth and final trial of the day, Wilbur achieved the longest flight of 59 seconds in the air and reached a height of 852 feet. In a little over 100 years since then, human beings have flown farther and faster than ever before, and continue to progressively get better at it.

Picture Credit : Google 

On May 15, 1963, the last mission of Project Mercury got under way. Astronaut Gordon Cooper closed out things in style as his flight stretched the capabilities of the Mercury spacecraft to its limits.

The Mercury Seven, also referred to as the Original Seven, were a group of seven astronauts selected to fly spacecraft for Project Mercury - the first human space flight program by the U.S. Even though there were some hiccups, the project, initiated in 1958, was largely successful in its three goals of operating a human spacecraft. investigating an astronaut's ability to work in space, and recovering spacecraft and crew safely.

Youngest of the Mercury Seven

The final flight of Project Mercury took place in May 1963. The youngest of the Original Seven, astronaut Gordon Cooper, went on to become the first American to fly in space for more than a day during this mission.

Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr. was born in 1927 and served in the Marine Corps in 1945 and 1946. He was commissioned in the U.S. Army after attending the University of Hawaii.

He was called to active duty in 1949 and completed pilot training in the U.S. Air Force. He was a fighter pilot in Germany from 1950 to 1954 and earned a bachelor's degree at the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1956. He served as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California until he was selected as an astronaut for Project Mercury. Cooper flew Mercury-Atlas 9, the last Mercury mission, which was launched on May 15, 1963. He called his capsule Faith 7, the number indicating his status as one of the Original Seven astronauts.

Conducts 11 experiments

 Longer than all of the previous Mercury missions combined. Cooper had enough time in his hands to conduct 11 experiments. These included monitoring radiation levels, tracking a strobe beacon that flashed intermittently, and taking photographs of the Earth.

When Cooper sent back black-and-white television images back to the control centre during his 17th orbit, it was the first TV transmission from an American crewed spacecraft. And even though there were plans for Cooper to sleep as much as eight hours, he only managed to sleep sporadically during portions of the flight. After 19 orbits without a hitch, a faulty sensor wrongly indicated that the spacecraft was beginning re-entry. A short circuit then damaged the automatic stabilisation and control system two orbits later. Despite these malfunctions and the rising carbon dioxide levels in his cabin and spacesuit. Cooper executed a perfect manual re-entry.

Lands without incident Cooper had clocked 34 hours and 20 minutes in space, orbiting the Earth 22 times and covering most of the globe in the process. This meant that he could practically land anywhere in the globe, a potential pain point that the U.S. State

Department was nervous about. In fact, on May 1, 1963, the country's Deputy Under Secretary fuel, venting gas that made the spacecraft roll, and more in what felt like a never-ending series during their eight-day mission. They, however, completed 122 orbits, travelling over 5.3 million km in 190 hours and 56 minutes, before safely making their way back to Earth.

After accumulating more than 225 hours in space, Cooper served as the backup command pilot of Gemini 12, which was launched in November 1966, and the backup command pilot for Apollo 10 in May 1969. By the time Cooper left NASA and retired from the Air Force in July 1970, human beings had set foot on the moon, further vindicating the Mercury and Gemini projects that Cooper had been involved with.

Picture Credit : Google 

On May 9, 1893 the first public demonstration of the kinetoscope was held at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Featuring three workers pretending to be blacksmiths, the film was among the first glimpses into motion pictures.

With the vacation upon us already and the pandemic scene relenting a bit, one of the activities that most families tend to do over the weekend is visiting a theatre to watch a new movie. Even though motion pictures are a multi-billion-dollar industry in the world today, they have been around only since late in the 19th Century. By the end of that century. the concept of moving images as entertainment was picking up. Magic lanterns had been around for generations and these devices employed glass slides with images that were then projected. We had looked at how pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge invented the zoopraxiscope in this column about two months back. Muybridge's zoopraxiscope projected a series of images, which were printed on a rotating glass disc, in successive phases of movement.

Muybridge meets Edison

It isn't clear as to when American inventor and businessman Thomas Alva Edison's interest in motion pictures began. Even though some argue that he was already interested for years, it is obvious that Muybridge's visit to Edison's laboratory in West Orange in February 1888 convinced the latter to invent a motion picture camera.

Muybridge suggested that they collaborate and work together to combine the zoopraxiscope with Edison's  phonograph - a device for the recording and reproduction of sound. While Edison was clearly intrigued by the idea, he decided against the partnership, maybe because he could see that the zoopraxiscope wasn't the best way of recording motion.

Calls it kinetoscope

Always an entrepreneur, Edison decided to protect his future inventions by filing a caveat with the Patents Office in October 1888. He described his ideas for a machine that would record and reproduce objects in motion, calling it a device that would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear". He named this yet to be invented device as a kinetoscope, by combining the Greek words for "movement" and "to watch"  kineto and scopos.

Much of the credit for the design of the kinetoscope actually goes to Edison's assistant, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, an accomplished photographer. Tasked with inventing Edison's kinetoscope in June 1889, Dickson, assisted by Charles A. Brown, carried out a lot of experimentation to turn the concept into reality.

Celluloid film to the rescue

After the initial attempts proved futile, Edison's team changed direction to that of others in the field. Edison had encountered French physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey, who had produced a sequence of images by utilising a continuous roll of film in his chronophotographie, in Europe and this put them onto their new track

By now, the inventive process was being delayed by the lack of film rolls of requisite length and durability. Edison's experiments started using emulsion-coated celluloid film sheets that were developed by photographic pioneer John Carbutt. When the Eastman. Company started producing its own celluloid film, Dickson and his new assistant William Heise got it in large quantities and set about working on their machine.

Means of seeing motion pictures

Dickson had the prototype ready by 1891 and the device doubled up both as a camera and a peep-hole viewer. On August 24, 1891 they applied for a patent for the kinetograph (the camera) and the kinetoscope (the viewer) and the device was completed by 1892.

Consisting of an upright wooden cabinet that was four feet high, the viewer had to look into a peep-hole at the top of the cabinet to see the motion picture. The first public demonstration of Edison's films featured three of his workers pretending to be blacksmiths and was held at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on May 9, 1893. By 1894. hundreds of people often lined up in parlours housing these devices to pay 25 cents (over $7 in today's money) and watch five reels.

In the years that followed, Dickson left Edison to be a part of the group that formed the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company: Edison sued that company in 1898 for infringing on his patent for the kinetograph; and the two companies started working together from 1909 until Edison's company left the film industry in 1918. By then, Dickson, Edison, and the kinetoscope had more than just provided a glimpse of a new form of media - the motion pictures.

Picture Credit : Google 

Joshua Martinangeli, 7, cannot attend classes due to a severe lung disease. The German student interacts with his teacher and classmates through an avatar robot that sits in his place in class and gives a blinking signal when he has something to say. "The children talk to him, laugh with him and sometimes even chitchat with him during the lesson," says the school headmistress. The project is an initiative by the local council in the Berlin district Marzahn-Hellersdorf. "It does happen from time to time, for various reasons, that a child cannot go to class in person. Then the avatar can give that child a chance to remain part of the school community," says a local district education councillor.

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If you're looking for a game with lightning fast rounds that you can play anywhere, Four Letters is for you. Your challenge is to make as many words as you can using just four letters. The letters keep changing as you create words, and the more words you make, the faster your remaining time decreases. When the clock runs out, check out the dictionary to see the words you missed. Four Letters offers stats including seconds spent spelling, word spelled the fastest, number of unique words spelled, and how many words spelled out of all possible four letter combinations. Free for iOS and Android.

Picture Credit : Google 

 

What one person wants from their Instagram experience is different from the next, and people’s needs are changing. To hide likes on your post, tap on the three-dot menu button next to an image and select 'hide like count. To pre-emptively hide likes on your posts when you create them, go to Advanced Settings and turn on 'Hide like and view counts on this post. To avoid seeing the total number of likes and views on posts from other accounts on your feed, go to Settings > Privacy> Posts and turn on Hide like and view counts'.

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The Plantone Smart Mini Indoor Garden provides planting, lighting and watering in a single system that allows you to grow five different species of plants at a single time. You never have to worry about forgetting to water, overwatering, or moving your plants to get more light. Every plant requires a different amount of water, so Plantone waters each plant according to its requirements. The water tank below the pots can be filled to the top for upto 60 days of water. Using pressurized technology, the pots siphon water from the tank automatically. The retractable tower's LEDs produce a balance of cool and warm light and turn off when natural light is detected. Control the intensity of the light and switch between different light cycles with the press of a button. The tower's sensor package monitors temperature, humidity, light level and air quality. It has WiFi and Bluetooth as well as an internal real time clock to keep time for your custom light schedules. Plantone's app lets you control watering and lighting remotely using your smartphone. The device is recyclable and uses repurposed materials.

Picture Credit : Google 

With a simple query on Google Search, you can get answers to any question. However, the convenience of getting answers in an instant and on-demand, may be making us over-confident of our own abilities, causing us to lose sight of where our memory ends and where the internet's begins, according to a University of Texas study. The process of searching on Google is much like searching our own memory that can lead us to confuse information. found online with information in our own heads. It could prove harmful while making medical or financial decisions, and could sway some in scientific and political views. The feeling could also affect students who may devote less time and energy to gaining knowledge. "When we're constantly connected to knowledge, the boundaries between internal and external knowledge begin to blur and fade," says Asst. Prof Adrian Ward "We mistake the internet's knowledge for our own."

Picture Credit : Google 

WhatsApp voice messages are great when you’re in a hurry, or want to make sure the intonation of your message is delivered correctly and isn’t open to interpretation as it sometimes can be in a text message. But until just recently, you couldn’t listen to your message before sending it. The feature was updated so you could stop recording and add more to your message, but it’s only now that you can preview it. When you're ready to record, tap and hold the mic button, then drag up to enter 'hands-free mode' (you'll see a lock as you drag up). WhatsApp will start recording. You can then delete the clip immediately by tapping the trash can icon, or tap the stop button. Once stopped, you'll see a play button that lets you preview your message. You can also delete the message after recording it.

Picture Credit : Google 

 

Mazes & More puts a spin on a classic puzzle game with some tricky twists. Find a way out in six modes: Classic, Enemies, Ice Floor, Darkness, Traps and Time Trial. In Darkness mode, you see the maze at the start, but then everything goes dark except for a small spotlight on you, and you have to make your way to the exit. Ice floor will see you sliding ahead of where you want to go. Customize your player avatar and tap or swipe your way through the mazes. Puzzles range from easy mazes to harder and advanced labyrinths; escape each and share your score with friends. Complete all 450 levels and become king/queen of the maze. Mazes & More is available in over 57 languages, including Hindi. Free for iOS and Android, the game does not require an internet connection.

Maze apps can boost your child’s motor, cognitive, and social-emotional skills. Playing Maze is a great way to improve the fine motor skills needed to perform specific movements such as writing, tying shoelaces, etc.  Maze requires a child to control their hand movements through the Maze without hitting the borders, improving their fine motor and hand-eye coordination, but also enhancing perseverance, patience, and focus.

The game often requires a child to come up with various strategies and consider different solutions. Therefore, maze apps for kids can foster problem-solving skills and spatial orientation. They also encourage children to practice their working memory and scan various solutions.

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The Van der Waals speaker aims to create an audio-visual experience by combining sound with an engaging visual display. The Bluetooth 5.1, USB-C speaker, named after Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate Johannes Diderik van der Waals, displays a 9-inch ferromagnetic visualizer. Ferromagnetic fluid or ferrofluid was a magnetic fluid developed by NASA for rocket ships to control fuel in zero gravity. As the song plays, the vibrations agitate the inky ferrofluid, causing it to change shape accordingly and create a mesmerizing audio display. Paired with 2x15W mid bass speakers and 2x15W tweeters, the speaker can also be paired with another in a stereo configuration. Housed in a tempered glass globe with anodized aluminium, the speaker's LED lights create a contrasting backdrop for the ferrofluid to dance to your favourite songs.

The speaker produces crisp, clear sound thanks to a quality build that incorporates the latest in audio technology. Four speakers that comprise two tweeters and two mid-bass speakers ensure great sound quality. Furthermore, the team used components from two wireless and audio tech leaders: Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. Van der Waals connects via Bluetooth 5.1 and supports SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD, and aptX Adaptive. It comes with a USB-C cable and works well on either its own or in a system of multiple speakers. Launched through Kickstarter, the Van der Waals speaker had surpassed the initial goal about 13 times over at the time of writing. 

Credit : Gessato

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The current number of known comets is: 3,743. Comets are frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of dust, rock, and ices. They range from a few miles to tens of miles wide, but as they orbit closer to the Sun, they heat up and spew gases and dust into a glowing head that can be larger than a planet. This material forms a tail that stretches millions of miles.

Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock, and dust that orbit the Sun. When frozen, they are the size of a small town. When a comet's orbit brings it close to the Sun, it heats up and spews dust and gases into a giant glowing head larger than most planets. The dust and gases form a tail that stretches away from the Sun for millions of miles. There are likely billions of comets orbiting our Sun in the Kuiper Belt and even more distant Oort Cloud.

Credit : NASA science 

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China announced its plan in 2018 to launch an artificial moon to light up the night sky. If the plan clicks, China's "illumination satellite" would orbit above the city of Chengdu and glow along with the actual Moon, but eight times brighter. The idea of a fake moon is to replace street lamps and lower electricity charges.

The facility, slated for official launch this year, will use powerful magnetic fields inside a 2-foot-diameter (60 centimeters) vacuum chamber to make gravity "disappear." The scientists were inspired by an earlier experiment that used magnets to levitate a frog.  Scientists plan to use the facility to test technology in prolonged low-gravity environments before it is sent to the moon, where gravity is just one-sixth of its strength on Earth. This will allow them to iron out any costly technical kinks, as well as test whether certain structures will survive on the moon's surface and assess the viability of a human settlement there.

According to the researchers, the inspiration for the chamber came from Andre Geim, a physicist at the University of Manchester in the U.K. who won the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for devising an experiment that made a frog float with a magnet.

The levitation trick used by Geim and now in the artificial-moon chamber comes from an effect called diamagnetic levitation. Atoms are made up of atomic nuclei and tiny electrons that orbit them in little loops of current; these moving currents, in turn, induce tiny magnetic fields. Usually, the randomly oriented magnetic fields of all the atoms in an object, whether they belong to a drop of water or a frog, cancel out, and no material-wide magnetism manifests.

Apply an external magnetic field to those atoms, however, and everything changes: The electrons will modify their motion, producing their own magnetic field to oppose the applied field. If the external magnet is strong enough, the magnetic force of repulsion between it and the field of the atoms will grow powerful enough to overcome gravity and levitate the object — whether it's an advanced piece of lunar tech or a confused amphibian — into the air.

The tests completed in the chamber will be used to inform China's lunar exploration program Chang'e, which takes its name from the Chinese goddess of the moon. This initiative includes Chang'e 4, which landed a rover on the far side of the moon in 2019, and Chang'e 5, which retrieved rock samples from the moon's surface in 2020. China has also declared that it will establish a lunar research station on the moon's south pole by 2029.

Credit : Live scince 

Picture Credit : Google 

Yes, that credit goes to American astronaut Alan Shepard. He was the first to play golf on the lunar surface. He achieved the feat when he was part of the Apollo 14 mission in 1971. He is said to have hit two golf balls across the surface of the moon with a makeshift club.

Shepard took a few moments during the Apollo 14 landing to show off his hobby during a live broadcast from the lunar surface on Feb. 6, 1971. He took two shots, with the second ball going "miles and mile," he said on-camera. He was exaggerating, according to new analysis from the United States Golf Association (USGA). Based on data from the crew and a modern-day moon mission, the group found that the first ball traveled 24 yards (22 meters) and the second about 40 yards (37 m). By comparison, a 2019 report using golf tournaments' gender categories shows that an average amateur male golfer on Earth can drive the ball 216 yards (198 m), and an average female golfer 148 yards (135 m), although those distances have increased significantly since Shepard's flight. To be fair to Shepard, however, he had more obstacles to contend with than your typical Sunday hobbyist. His golf "club" was actually a modified sample collection device with the head attached to the end. He was also wearing a notoriously stiff spacesuit that forced him to swing with a single arm. 

USGA found the lunar golf balls in high-resolution, enhanced scans of the original flight footage of the Apollo 14 mission. The association measured the point between divot and locations where the balls ended up using high-resolution images from orbit taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched in 2009.

The association used a second technique to confirm the measurements. Some of the images used were photo sequences taken from the lunar module, the astronauts' landing craft, taken to show the entire landing site to geologists on Earth. USGA stitched the photographs into a panorama to demonstrate the location of the divot and the two balls, which (after taking the new photo enhancements into account) were well within view of the landed spacecraft. 

The two balls are also visible in Apollo 14 takeoff footage, but only after applying "a complex stacking technique on multiple separate frames," according to a USGA Golf Journal story. This means NASA astronauts Shepard and Ed Mitchell likely couldn't have seen the balls themselves from the spacecraft, either during their time on the ground or when flying away from the moon.

Credit : Space.com

Picture Credit : Google