City group kindles scientific curiosity by offering students DIY projects

Disappointed with the education system in our country, which relies heavily on textbooks and offers not enough practical experience, city-based Saminathan Balasundaram decided to start a science club for school students after quitting his tech job. What began as a community project in 2015, soon evolved into his start-up, Young Scientist. The start-up is now allowing hundreds of students from schools across the city to understand various branches of science and build their own projects. The group offers to students intriguing demonstrations and experiments — from learning about electricity to making their own air-powered rockets.

“The focus of the start-up is to create visual and hands-on learning opportunities for children. Our education system has not changed in decades, even though all the technologies around us have developed immensely. Learning only out of textbooks has been ineffective, as they are outdated. My son is learning the same contents as I did when I was a child. So, we decided to change that and bring more practical knowledge to children. As a parent I wanted to give children a better and wholistic learning experience through the platform,” Saminathan, the founder-director of thefirm tells DT Next.

Through workshops and other engagements for students from classes 3 to 10, the start-up introduces different themes in science like energy, light, robotics and rocket science. These aspects are then made more fun through different experiments. The group also hosts science shows at city schools and kids’ birthday parties — with an aim to make learning science as a part of everyday life. Saminathan says that while the conventional education system has got children used to learning by rote, allowing them to experiment gets them truly interested in science.

“We all observe that children are keen to learn new technologies like phones, but not so keen on studying from books. We found that children love to explore, touch and feel different materials and learn through that. By giving them an opportunity to learn by themselves, we are sparking curiosity in them. We encourage the students questioning everything they see, as that is what allows them appreciate and learn about the things around us,” he adds.

Over the past four years that the group has been operational, they have worked with at least 1,000 students each year — from both public and private schools. The start-up hosts workshops almost every weekend, apart from extra sessions at their centre on Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) during summers. This Independence Day, the start-up will be hosting a workshop on rockets, helping students make their own air-powered rockets using pipes. The workshop will be held at their science centre on OMR from 2.30 pmto 4 pm.