Outreach – Ajit M Srivastava

(last updated in 2021)

Outreach Activities

Outreach Committee:

Working as chairman of the joint IOP/NISER Outreach Committee since 2009 (presently, IOP Outreach Committee). Earlier, for years 2007 and 2008 worked as a member of this committee. Main activities of the Committee have been to arrange special programs (popular lectures and lab visit/demonstration of experiments) on the National Science day since the year 2007. Under this Outreach we also sponsored Science Education program of the Samanta Chandra Sekhar Amateur Astronomers’ Association (SCAAA), Bhubaneswar, for visiting villages with multimedia system and telescopes for night sky viewing.

Physics Open Discussions (POD) and POD-Online for students

Starting in 2007, organized a regular program of conducting Physics Open Discussions(POD), once a month, for school children at the Institute of Physics. By providing an opportunity for open and informal discussions between the school students and research scientists at IOP, students were exposed to exciting areas in the field of physics. The students were encouraged to discuss any doubts they may have, and were especially encouraged to discuss freely, so that they get over the hesitation of asking questions. The program ran very well for about 2 years. Special Physics Open Discussion Sessions was also started for NISER students in 2009. These were conducted on every 3rd Saturday of the month. These discussions were typically more advanced and often related to the material being covered in the NISER classes.
POD has now been re-started in the online mode. The first session was held on Sept. 27,2020 with 100 students participating online for a one and a half hour discussion session with theme topic being Motion.
The next two sessions were held on 3rd Jan. 2021, in person, at the Cohen International School, Bhubaneswar for students, and Online on 30th Jan. It is now being held online on the 3rd Saturday of each month.

YouTube link of POD sessions:

Session 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX0f9pyVOzU&t=254s

(Note: Session 1 had audio recording problems in the YouTube video)

Session 2:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZiLL97qdh8&t=1280s

Session 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVBwrhKfn-I

Session 4 link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKSVgddnUkg&t=889s

Session 5 link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIBlc_1EEsM&t=1s

Session 6 link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neUh2ouL4DA&t=523s

Session 7 link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OofaDg5zyyM&t=2528s

Session 8 link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNQ-sm0qa9I&t=2414s

Session 9 link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDeMJ3Fg_sc&t=915s

Session 10 link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D6OAAcMaXc&t=852s

Session 11 link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIUg2rslZ88&t=2458s

Session 12 link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfZy1yQGiXo&t=152s

SCAAA:

Worked as member and since 2008 as vice president of the Samanta Chandra Sekhar Amateur Astronomers’ Association (SCAAA), Bhubaneswar. Activities of SCAAA consist of:

Monthly meetings for discussions on astronomy/Astrophysics related discussions.
Arranging telescope sessions on eclipses and other important astronomy events.
Since 2009, carrying out visits to villages in Orissa for astronomy/science popularization with multimedia system for presentations and telescopes for night sky viewing sessions.uu

Telescope making workshops for school students:

Several telescope making workshops have been conducted for school students (classes VIII-XII) since 2013. Students make a basic telescope with two double convex lenses with magnification 10 (using an objective of 50 cm focal length and eyepiece of 5 cm focal length) and chart papers (with black interior chart paper). Students are provided all the material, and they are allowed to take back the telescopes they made. At the beginning of the workshop, a one hour lecture is given on basics of ray optics, lenses and telescope physics.

Student nurturing program of IMA:

Regular participation in the joint program (with motivational, popular science, or career counseling talks, along with telescope shows) with The Institute of Mathematics and Applications, Bhubaneswar, in the Rural Student Nurturing program. In this program of IMA, students from deep rural areas were brought to IMA for camps running for several weeks. Planned activities include inviting same batch of students regularly starting from class VI upto class XII for continuous inspiration and motivation.

Night sky watch program with telescopes:

Night sky watch programs are regularly arranged at the Institute for all the members of IOP and their families. The program is conducted with an 8” Schmidt-Cassegrain 2 meter focal length telescope, computer controlled with GPS system, and with a 4” refractor telescope, with manual controls, along with binoculars.
Observation of the Jupiter-Saturn great conjunction with this telescope, was held at IOP on 21st December,2020, for IOP members and their families, with strict following of Covid-safety norms.