LUMS Physics faculty member, Dr. Muhammad Sabieh Anwar recently traveled around Pakistan to help inspire and fascinate school children about science. This outreach is part of a National Science Campaign launched by the Khwarizmi Science Society (http://www.khwarizmi.org). As part of this movement, the Society aims to infuse interest in students through jaw-dropping science demonstrations and interactive discussions revolving around science experiments.
Science is considered to be boring in schools as teaching methodologies are dry and insipid. Dr. Anwar believes that all this must change by introducing fascinating high quality scientific demonstrations, coupled with intelligent discussions.
In 2016, the Society representatives visited government schools in Swat, Mardan, D.G. Khan, Lahore, Larkana, Khairpur, Jhang and Sukkur with indigenous experiments. These experiments included how liquefied nitrogen could alter the properties of tennis balls, rendering them brittle and how gas balloons respond to low temperature; how sodium alginate extracted from sea weed reacts with calcium chloride to form long chains of molecules or beads of gel.
Under Dr. Anwar’s supervision, students also performed visually appealing experiments such as reacting sodium with water or the effervescent reaction of hydrogen peroxide with iodide; golden rain, chemical gardens are all built and are meant to motivate students towards the chemical sciences. The properties of lasers and lenses were also demonstrated and finally rotating mirrors were employed to create astounding mathematical shapes called Rhodonea Curves.
These activities can be followed at the Society’s website: http://www.khwarizmi.org, the image repository http://khwarizmi.shutterfly.com and the twitter account @KSSPakistan.
