An exhibition of scientific skills

WHAT CAN Anali Vegum or Alstonia Vennetta do for you in case a snake bites? Viper venom can be removed and without the usual side effects of Anti-Snake Venom.

What is the best solution for the problems of increased use of fertilisers and pesticides like alkalinity of the soil or poisons entering through the food chain? Bio- pesticides prepared from tobacco decoction or neem are the right answer.

How to manage coir dust that is being wasted by industries causing environmental pollution? Tonnes of coir pith can be composted in just 45 days.

These ideas were not propounded by scientists armed with doctoral degrees but by school students at the Intel Science Fair.

Vivek K. Krishnan and Ajay Alex from Thiruvananthapuram's St. Thomas, Central school give a rapid fire exposition of their study on the native snake venom used by tribals in Kerala. It took them one month to prepare their project.

Same was the case with Mr. T. S. Chaitanya and M. Sandeep from Anakapalli in Andhra Pradesh who spoke of means to avoid the bugs that nibble at rice, wheat and other grains. So was the eco- friendly engine powered water processed through electrolysis. Mr. Sriram of Kendriya Vidyalaya, IIT Madras, showed a balloon device which expands when there is no gas leak keeping the lid above it high and deflates when there is leakage, bringing the lid down. This he explains can be adopted as an industrial security system to detect gas leaks.

From Albert Einstein to Michael Faraday, the 46 teams who exhibited their study and findings had a lot to say at the Science Exposition. Says Ms. Debjani Ghosh, Head of the Education Program, Intel, ``Chennai has the highest number of entries and the maximum number of selected projects. The city students are superior in terms of quality and enthusiasm''.

Pointing out that this was the fourth year of this exhibition, she said the conditions were that the projects should not be book-based but must be an original idea.

There were 9,800 entries all over the country and the Scientific Review Committee selected 200 projects for the exhibitions to be held in Jaipur, Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi and Chennai.

The competitions are conducted under nine categories and environmental science usually attracts the most interesting projects, as ``they are subjects close to people's hearts''.

Dismissing scepticism that the youth of today belong to the ``MTV Generation - dead to work and stuck to television'', she says that all the sampling, analysis and study that goes into the projects presented negates such fears.

The first prize for the team category project went to M/s. Suresh Gopalakrishnan and M. Sudeep Krishna of Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan Junior College for non-conventional source of energy and the second prize to the snake venom team from Thiruvananthapuram. Among the individual projects, the first prize was bagged by Syed Ozar Ahmed for his project on natural water-cooling system and the second place for Brihdish Rajgopalan Subramaniam of Bhavan's Rajaji Vidyashram for the sprinkler irrigation system.

By Akila Dinakar

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