Volume: III Issue: 10 March 2017

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“Don’t read success stories, you will only get a message. Read failure stories, you will get some ideas to get success.”

-A. P.J Abdul Kalam

Chairman’s Note

My Dear Students, Among the 84 lakh species of living beings, human being stands out unique, special and extraordinary, owing to his reasoning, logical thinking, analytical, comprehension skills and more than anything, his capacity to imagine! Our vision is limited to a narrow bandwidth, our audibility is limited to a small bandwidth and capacities of our senses are greatly limited. Despite all these limitations, human being is able to climb the top of the evolution ladder. All these are possible because of his skills and intelligence. There is a budding scientist in every student, who is highly inquisitive and curious about various things happening around him. This curiosity should move us to the next stage of experimentation, observation, analysis and comprehension. I am sure that ‘Vagdevi Vilas Vignan Patrika’ will kindle the scientific spirit in every student and help to transform into a budding scientist. I congratulate and thank all those who have contributed to this news bulletin becoming a reality.

K. Harish Chairman, Vagdevi Vilas Institutions

Volume: III Issue: 10 March 2017

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“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” -Buddha

Editor’s Note

Dear Reader,

We are pleased to present the March ’17 issue of our e-Science Magazine. We have attempted to

showcase events and happenings in the field of Science across Vagdevi Vilas Institutions. We

request parents to encourage children to collect scientific information from various fields,

experiments held in science across the globe during this summer vacation and share it with all in

the form of news articles for the coming months. We wish to receive more such interesting

articles based on science in future.

So, Young Reader! Take your pen and note book, look around for such events and

happenings which keeps you thinking and document. Make best use of your vacation. Enjoy!

We wish you good luck and Happy Summer vacation.

-Research and Development Department.

Contents Page no.

Chairman’s note 1

Editor’s note 2

Report on Wonderla Environment and Energy Conservation Award

3

Olympiad Prize distribution Ceremony 4-5

Pre-primary activities 6-7

Scientists born in March 8-9

Articles by Facilitators 10

Articles by Students 11-13

Mathematics Puzzles and previous answer

14-15

Science Puzzle 16

Volume: III Issue: 10 March 2017

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“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” -Albert Einstein

Wonderla Environment and Energy Conservation Award

2017

Wonderla Environment and Energy conservation award, 2017 was conducted on

23 of February, 2017at Wonderla Amusement Park. Out of 108 schools from all

over Karnataka Vagdevi Vilas school , Marathahalli bagged the first prize , cash

award of Rs. 50,000/- . Ms. Harshika Ponachcha, popular Karnataka film actress

was the Chief guest for the programme. The function was presided by Mr.

Kochouseph Thomas Chittilappilly, the founder chairman of Wonderla.

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“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself.” -Galileo

VSO/ VMO/VEO Prize Distribution Ceremony

The prize distribution ceremony for the Vagdevi Vilas Science and Math Olympiad

was held on the 31of March, 2017 at Vagdevi Vilas School, Marathahalli. This

ceremony was graced by Chairman Shri. K Harish, Administrator, CEO and Head of

Pre Primary, Kum. Shyallet, Scientist Shri. Harish Bhat, Principal Smt. Padma Sagar

and Vice Principal Shri. Shridhariah as the dignitaries on the diaz.

The overall first prize winners of VSO and VMO each received Dell laptops with bags

.The overall second prize winners each received Casio keyboard with adaptors. And

the overall third prize winners each received a cheque. All the winners were given a

certificate of merit.

The students and parents were thrilled to have received the prizes and enthusiastically

shared their views. They mentioned about the questions being very challenging and

effective in equipping children to face other competitive exams. Teachers whose

constant efforts made students enrol in the Olympiads exams were felicitated. This

was followed by a motivational speech by our Chairman and words of encouragement

by Shri. Harish Bhatt. Following this, the students of grade 4 I put up a vibrant,

energy filled dance performance.

This ceremony motivated many more students to work hard and participate in the

Vagdevi Olympiad exams.

Volume: III Issue: 10 March 2017

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.

“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.” -Rabindranath Tagore

Volume: III Issue: 10 March 2017

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If you lift a kangaroo’s tail off the ground it can’t hop – they use their tails for balance

Tiny Tots Busy in labs

The best way to learn science is to do science. Hands on activities, student centric inquiry are

at the core of good science education. Concepts used in science and mathematics grow and

develop as early as infancy babies explore the world with their senses. Children are born curious

and want to explore everything around them. To inculcate inquisitiveness in science and

mathematics R&D Department of Vagdevi Vilas School regularly conducts science and

mathematics activities for the students of LKG, UKG and Montessori section.

Science activities during the month of March activities are based on the following concepts. Introduction to our solar system, different types of seasons and narration about different colours

of rainbow.

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“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

- Oscar Wilde

Tiny Tots Busy in labs… Mathematics activities for the month of March are based on the following math concepts.

Introduction to simple addition

Introduction to number names for group of 10

Special days in the month of March:-

March 8th :- International Women’s Day

March 12th :- Dolijatra

March 20 :- International Earth Day

March 28:- Gudi Padawa

March 29:- Ugadi

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Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879. He had a speech problem and

often paused to think about what to say next. Einstein wrote about two events he thought were

important in his childhood. He remembered how he marvelled at the invisible forces that turned the

needle of a compass when he was five and a geometry book that he found when he was twelve. He

read the book over and over. He enjoyed classical music and played the violin.

Einstein renounced his German citizenship to avoid military service and enrolled at the Swiss

Federal Polytechnic School in Zürich, Switzerland. Because he liked to study on his own, he avoided

classes which angered his professors. Heinrich Weber, wrote a letter of “recommendation” that led to

Einstein being turned down for every teaching job he applied for after graduation. In 1902, the father

of a friend recommended him for a job as a clerk in the Swiss patent office in Bern, Switzerland.

In 1905, Einstein obtained his Doctorate degree and published four papers describing his research,

including the Special Theory of Relativity. This theory has his famous equation E = mc2 which

means that when matter is converted to energy, the amount of energy is equal to the mass of an

object times the square of the speed of light in a vacuum. It also means that the speed of light is fixed

and independent of the observer’s motion. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for physics for his

explanation of the photoelectric effect.

Einstein moved to Princeton, New Jersey in 1933 to become a professor at the Institute for

Advanced Study. In 1939, World War II broke out. Einstein was afraid that Germany was working

on atomic bombs and wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to explain his position. Although

Einstein never actually worked on an American atomic bomb, his theories helped to make its

construction possible. After the war, Einstein worked with others who wanted to see nuclear

weapons abolished. From 1901 to 1954 Albert Einstein published more than 300 scientific works. In

later years, he worked on a new theory, the unified field theory. Scientists recently discovered a new

particle using the Large Hadron Collider which may help prove his theory.

The leg bones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk.

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Here are two Einstein quotes:

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music.

I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music…. I do know that I get

most joy in life out of my violin.”

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is

more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the

world.”

Einstein’s intellect was accompanied by a strong passion for social justice and dedication to

pacifism. Einstein strongly opposed injustices based on race or religion. He supported the American

civil rights movement and efforts to preserve the Jewish faith. Einstein is generally considered the

most influential physicist of the 20th century. TIME magazine named him “Person of the Century”

in 1999. He died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey.

Mario Molina

Born in Mexico City in 1943, chemist Mario Molina studied in Mexico and Germany before

coming to the United States to study the effects of man-made compounds on the ozone layer. He

won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in 1995.

Interested in science at an early age, he created his own chemistry lab in a bathroom at his home.

After completing his studies in Mexico and Germany, he moved to the United States in 1968 to

obtain an advanced degree in physical chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. While at

Berkeley, he met Luisa Tan who later became his wife.

He graduated in 1972 and went to the University of California, Irvine in 1973 to continue his

research. Molina later went work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1980s. In 1989, he joined

the faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He left MIT and returned to California

in 2004 to teach at the University of California, San Diego.

A whale’s heart beats only nine times a minute.

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Molina is best known for his study on the effect on Earth's upper atmosphere of man-made

compounds. He noted that some compounds, such as chlorofluorocarbons, were having an adverse

effect on the ozone layer. Molina shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry in recognition of this

work.

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847. When

he was only eleven years old, he invented a machine that could clean wheat. Graham

studied anatomy and physiology at the University of London, but moved with his

family to Quebec, Canada in 1870.

Bell soon moved to Boston, Massachusetts. In 1871, he began working with deaf

people and published the system of Visible Hearing that was developed by his father.

Visible Hearing illustrated how the tongue, lips, and throat are used to produce vocal sounds. In

1872, Bell founded a school for the deaf which soon became part of Boston University.

Alexander Graham Bell is best known for his invention of the telephone. While trying to discover

the secret to transmitting multiple messages on a single wire, Bell heard the sound of a plucked

string along some of the electrical wire. One of Bell’s assistants, Thomas A. Watson was trying to

reactivate a telephone transmitter. After hearing the sound, Bell believed he could send the sound of

a human voice over the wire. After receiving a patent on March 7, 1876, for transmitting sound along

a single wire, he successfully transmitted human speech on March 10th. Bell’s telephone patent was

one of the most valuable patents ever issued.

Bell went on to invent a precursor to the modern day air conditioner, and a device called a

“photophone” that enabled sound to be transmitted on a beam of light and on which today’s fibre

optic and laser communication systems are based. In 1898, Alexander Graham Bell and his son-in

law took over the National Geographic Society and built into one of the most recognized magazines

in the world. Bell also helped found Science Magazine, one of the most respected research journals

in the world.

Alexander Graham Bell died August 2, 1922. On the day of his burial, in honor of Bell, all

telephone service in the U.S. was stopped for one minute.

“The true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions we uncover the laws of truth.” -Jagadish Chandra Bose

- Rishi Aurobindo

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Solar Probe Plus Solar Probe +, previously NASA Solar Probe, is a planned

robotic spacecraft to probe the outer corona of the Sun. It will

approach to within 8.5 solar radii (5.9 million kilometres or 3.67

million miles) to the 'surface' (photosphere) of the Sun. The project was announced as a new

mission start in the fiscal 2009 budget year. On May 1, 2008 Johns Hopkins

University Applied Physics Laboratory announced it will design and build the spacecraft, on

a schedule to launch it in 2015. The launch date has since been pushed to 2018, with

the Delta IV Heavy as the launch vehicle.

Apparent size of the Sun as seen from the orbit of Solar Probe Plus compared to its apparent

size seen from Earth.

Trajectory and mission:-

Early conceptual designs for the Solar Probe mission used a gravity assist manoeuvre

at Jupiter to cancel the orbital speed of the probe launched from Earth, in order to drop onto a

trajectory close to the Sun. The Solar Probe Plus mission design simplifies this trajectory by

using repeated gravity assists at Venus, to incrementally decrease the orbital perihelion to

achieve multiple passes to approximately 8.5 solar radii, or about 6,000,000 km

(3,700,000 mi).

The mission is designed to survive the harsh environment near the Sun, where the incident

solar intensity is approximately 520 times the intensity at Earth orbit, by the use of a solar

shadow-shield. The solar shield, at the front of the spacecraft, is made of reinforced carbon-

carbon composite. The spacecraft systems, and the scientific instruments, are located in

the umbra of the shield, where direct light from the sun is fully blocked. The primary power

for the mission will be by use of a dual system of photovoltaic arrays. A primary photovoltaic

array, used for the portion of the mission outside 0.25 AU, is retracted behind the shadow

shield during the close approach to the Sun, and a much smaller secondary array powers the

spacecraft through closest approach. This secondary array uses pumped-fluid cooling to

maintain operating temperature.

As the probe passes around the Sun, it will achieve a velocity of up to 200 km/s (120 mi/s) at

that time making it the fastest manmade object ever, almost three times faster than the current

record holder, Juno.

Scientific goals:-

1. Determine the structure and dynamics of the magnetic fields at the sources of solar wind.

2. Trace the flow of energy that heats the corona and accelerates the solar wind.

3. Determine what mechanisms accelerate and transport energetic particles.

4. Explore dusty plasma near the Sun and its influence on solar wind and energetic particle

formation.

Baby horses can walk and run after just a few hours of being born.

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Sneaky Venus Flytraps Use Prey for Nutrients and Energy The fact that the Dionaea muscipula, or Venus flytrap, feeds

on unsuspecting insects by luring them into its jaw-like leaves with

sweet-smelling nectar has been known for centuries. However,

scientists thought the prey only provided the plant with essential

nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous, that are severely lacking in

their native habitats – the subtropical wetlands of North and South

Carolina. They had assumed that like other vegetation,

the carnivorous plants obtained their energy through photosynthesis

– using light energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar

and oxygen. It turns out they were wrong.

A team led by Dr. Heinz Rennenberg and Lukas Fasbender from the University of Freiburg in

Germany has uncovered that the crafty plants use the proteins extracted from their prey, not

just for nutrients, but also as an alternative source of energy.

The researchers, who published their findings in the scientific journal New Phytologist on

January 20, reached this conclusion after feeding the plants highly enriched isotopes of

carbon and nitrogen glutamine. They then monitored the amount of carbon dioxide released

with the help of an infrared laser. What they noticed was that a significant amount of the

carbon dioxide emitted during respiration was derived from the prey being digested, not

from photosynthesis conducted by the plant.

The scientists believe the large amount of energy required to break down the insect’s proteins

cannot be supplied by traditional photosynthesis alone. Hence, the plants jump-start the

digestive process using energy from photosynthesis and then supplement it with that obtained

from oxidizing the amino acids present in its prey.

This is not the first time the Venus flytrap has impressed scientists. In 2016, Ranier Hedrich,

a biophysicist at the University of Würzburg, discovered that the Venus flytrap does not

waste energy snaring victims or producing digestive enzymes until it is sure that the prey is

real. According to the researcher, the process begins when the insect lands on the trap. If it

just touches the sensory hair on the leaves once, nothing happens. The smart plant knows that

this could be the result of the wind or a raindrop. It is only when the unsuspecting

creature triggers the sensory hair a second time that it gets trapped inside the leaf. However,

the insect still has a chance to survive if it doesn’t move. That’s because it is the third trigger

that gets the plant ready to produce the digestion enzyme and the fifth that get the digestive

efforts going. It is no wonder that Charles Darwin called the Venus flytrap “one of the most

wonderful (plants) in the world.”

A dog’s shoulder blades are unattached to the rest of the skeleton to allow greater flexibility for running.

Volume: III Issue: 10 March 2017

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It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

-Albert Einstein

Foldscope - The Origami Paper Microscope The Foldscope, a portable and versatile microscope made mostly

out of paper (water-proof), magnifies the wonders of the

microscopic world, without the bulk and expense of a

conventional research microscope. Foldscope is designed to bring

microscopy out of science laboratories and into the hands of

people around the world.

Foldscope is a real microscope, with magnification and resolution

sufficient for imaging live individual cells,

cellular organelles, embryos, swimming bacteria and much more.

Because the Foldscope is so affordable and can be used

anywhere, it brings science to your daily life, whether that means looking at what's growing in

your flower pot or watching bacteria from your mouth or analysing the bee stinger that got your

thumb. It provides, encourages and enables the curious explorer in each of us and makes science

happen anywhere, anytime.

what can you see with a Foldscope?

Foldscope lets you explore a previously invisible world of microscopic shapes and life forms, like

live amoeba, bacteria, algae, pollen, diatoms, cyanobacteria, ants, mites, fungi, spider

eggs, mosquito larvae, bees, vorticella, suctorians, tardigrades, nematodes, stem

cells, rotifers, daphnia, hydra, flower petals, salt, baking soda, onion cells, red blood cells, cheek

cells, bird feathers, copepods... you can find documentation of literally thousands of applications

and examples generated by users from around the world. Have you ever wondered how a mosquito

larvae breathes underwater or how a cell splits in two or what paints a butterfly uses on its wing?

How Does It Work?

Foldscope can be used in three different modes with

similar performance; (1) Eye-view (2) Coupled to any

Smart Phone (3) Projection microscopy.

While it is simple to use the Foldscope, extensive

development, prototyping, and design for

manufacturing went into producing the tool. The

design leverages recent advances in micro-optics as

well as the concept of "flat manufacturing" for large-

scale production.

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A tarantula spider can survive for more than two years without food.

ANSWERS FOR THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY

1. 55, Each number indicates its position in the grid. 55 indicates row 5 column 5 2. EDUCATOR

1.

What number should

replace the question mark?

2.

Insert the missing

letter in order to

spell out an eight

letter word reading

clockwise.

MATHS FUN ENGLISH FUN

Volume: III Issue: 10 March 2017

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The word "listen" contains the same letters as the word "silent".

Mathematics Puzzle

1. Exhibit your fantastic memory. Here is a chance for a spectacular magic

trick to be performed by an incredible memory whiz. Show this chart to

someone. Ask that person to tell you a number in any circle and say that

you will write the seven digit that are written below the number. What an

outstanding memory! Do you want to know the trick? First try to solve it

by yourself.

2460662

8314594

6404482

9549325

3145943

6516730

1459437

5493257

4370774

0550550

9213471

3369549

2358314

6178538

5505505

2246066

2. Put the numbers 1 to 6 in the circles so that three numbers in a line add

up to 17.

311 27 35 48

2 45 30 34

23 39 18 22

21 5 44 11

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'Hippopotomonstrose squippedaliophobia' is the fear of long words.

Science Puzzle

3. This is a classic barrel riddle. You know the barrel is approximately half

filled with oil but you are not sure how fill is the barrel is.

How can you check if its

1. Exactly Half filled

2. > Half Filled

3. < Half Filled.

4. An electrician has two two-way switches (single-pole, double-throw), a

light bulb, and a power source. How should he connect the terminals so

that either switch can be used to turn the light on or off?

Send your answers to: researchdep.vvi@gmail.com