Tag: Children

It was in about 430 BCE that the crucial, mind-altering, breathtaking idea of ‘everything’ being made up of atoms emerged. A cheerful Greek philosopher, Democritus, who spent a truckload of time observing nature, eventually figured out the foundational maxim of many sciences today and coined the Latin word “atomos”, which is where “atom” comes from....

Imagine a classroom where you are given the space to explore and understand concepts on your own with the guidance of a teacher and the internet. Imagine the amount of knowledge which will open up if this non-traditional education style is adopted. That is exactly what Professor Sugata Mitra, a computer scientist and educational theorist,...

Linguistics has a confession to make. It is just like you. It tells you that it is as emotional, messy, dynamic, strategic, and perfectly imperfect as any human being. Whatever you are, linguistics becomes. Why? Because linguistics watches you. It watches you with the same clinical precision of a surgeon. It watches you speak and...

“Nani, aaj kya banaya?” (”Grandma, what did you cook today?”) It’s a simple question that millions of Indians ask every day. But what if you asked it to an AI assistant? Would it understand the language? The accent? The mix of Hindi and English? What if the question was asked in Tulu, Bundeli, Kodava or...

Mary Anning was born in a little town in South West England in the 18th Century. Her father Richard Anning was a carpenter. When Mary was about a year old, she survived a major lightning strike that killed the woman who was carrying her. This ‘miraculous escape’ soon made her famous in her little town....

Launch Vehicle A launch vehicle, commonly known as a rocket, is the powerful vehicle that carries a spacecraft from Earth into space. Its primary job is to generate enough thrust to overcome Earth’s gravity and place the mission on the correct path. Once it has completed this task, the rocket’s role ends. What does it...

In low Earth orbit can be found the International Space Station — a large laboratory where astronauts from different countries live and work together while circling Earth every 90 minutes. What began as a project involving the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada is today a strong symbol of cooperation among countries for the...

By way of our sharp fascination towards a spaceflight event when it happens, we tend to forget reading into the entire process that led to that moment. Process, in today’s ‘all-instant’ era, seems to lose value unless you are part of it. Going to space in a rocket and coming back sounds simply doable but...

A canvas of stars Some of the greatest works of art can be found in museums and galleries. But little do many know, the greatest piece of artwork can be found on the universe’s largest canvas: The night sky! It can be collectively agreed upon that the night sky is a mere window to the...

The most significant factor which decides your height is genes — the basic and functional unit of heredity itself. They play an important role in determining physical traits, i.e., whether you have curly or straight hair, long or short legs, or even what your smile might look like. Scientists have identified over 700 different genetic...