Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
For some hi-tech fun
|
If done the right way, engineering can be fun. That's what "Shaastra", the annual technical festival at IIT-Madras to be held from October 4 to 7 aims to demonstrate through its innovative agenda.
|
THERE'S SOMETHING happening at the IIT-Madras these days, and it sure isn't anywhere close to exam time! The hostels, the departments, the whole institute is abuzz: people are running around looking for other people, all sorts of weird and exotic packages are arriving, and there are even a few airborne projectiles that look suspiciously like rockets that keep going up into the sky every now and then.
What's happening? Well, in two weeks, IIT-Madras will conduct its annual technical festival "Shaastra", and preparations are getting more and more hectic.
Technical? Festival? It's difficult to believe that anything related to engineering could be festival-like, even remotely. But the IITians in charge of organising it are happy to enlighten you. If it's done the right way, engineering is great fun, they say, even for the non-geeky types. To prove their point, they're more than willing to take you on a tour of the "Shaastra" preparations.
For instance, there's this thing happening at "Shaastra", very presumptuously called "The Greatest Thing in the World". The students who are working on it call it "the easiest and most entertaining way to get into the record books"! What they're attempting to do is to build the world's longest and tallest bridge during "Shaastra" — out of paper! Several weeks of refining have resulted in a design, which the organisers claim, is not only strong enough to hold itself up, but can actually carry people. They can't wait for "Shaastra" to start, when people will actually start building the bridge, with 20,000 newspapers, and then walk over it to test if the design is really as good as the calculations show. Anyone who comes to "Shaastra" is free to help out, and the organisers are trying hard to get observers from the record books to take note of the achievement. It's certainly going to be one of the weirdest triumphs of engineering! But building the greatest paper bridge is merely one of the many events happening at "Shaastra".
One of the biggest crowd pullers at "Shaastra" has been the impressive series of popular lectures that IIT-Madras arranges. This year, IIT is going all out to get a constellation of engineers and technology pioneers that would be difficult to find at one place and time anywhere in the country. For instance, there's the automobile design guru, Dilip Chhabria, flying down to give a talk about how he jazzes up those cars. There's M.S. Raghunathan, one of India's finest mathematical brains, giving his much-acclaimed talk on "The Ten Unsolved Problems of Mathematics." Then, there's Dr. Vidyasagar, Indian engineering's blue-eyed boy, who's become a master of so many fields of engineering, and is now heading TCS' Bio-informatics division. Venu Srinivasan of the TVS group, one of India's most successful engineering companies, is giving the inaugural lecture.
And to round that off, there will almost certainly be the annual affair of video-conferencing with some of the world's legends of science and technology, this time. But what is likely to be most impressive is the Open House that IIT-Madras is hosting, after a break of several years. The impeccably equipped labs of IIT-Madras are thrown open to the public, to give them an idea of what kind of research goes on in there. The last open house that IIT-Madras conducted, held many years ago, drew crowds of more than 10,000 people! The next group of organisers that we're introduced to is conducting various competitions at "Shaastra".
"Shaastra" has competitions that will cater to all sorts of tastes, they say, and the fun of taking part will be at least as great as the thrill of winning big prize money. A sampling of some of the contests shows they aren't talking through their hats. A quirky competition, appropriately called "Make Things Work", challenges participants to assemble and repair broken-down mechanisms and gadgets as quickly as possible. An informal design contest, that the organisers call "Project-X", will have people make ingenious designs from ordinary material, on the spot. Apparently, one of last year's tasks was to design a windmill out of aluminium sheets, and the designs that some teams came up with were so amazing that they floored even the IIT faculty!
In the middle of the vast IIT-Madras stadium, there are a group of students who are testing — rockets! Rocketry is one of the contests that "Shaastra" is introducing this year, and the organisers say that if it picks up, it's definitely going to be one of the most popular fixtures at "Shaastra". If firing Diwali rockets is a source of joy and thrill to you then this one's a challenge that you can't resist. The competition dares people to construct rockets that launch from underwater, and fly as high and as straight as possible after leaving the water surface! Of course, "Shaastra" has more serious competitions too, and though they're not quite as visible as rocketry, they're fought for tooth and nail, and the winners take home enormous prize money. Besides, they are a matter of great prestige.
"Shaastra" has six paper presentation sessions, where some of the most original student research in the country is presented. Design contests are a major fixture at "Shaastra" this year, spanning almost all branches of engineering, from automobile design to civil modelling and software design. These contests require entries to be submitted in advance, and deadlines for submissions are fast approaching, so perhaps it's worthwhile for those who are enthusiastic about design to check them out.
"Shaastra" has been around for three years now, but it's getting a major makeover this year. For one, it's being shifted out of the `high-pressure' February-March season, when half of India's engineering colleges are having exams, and the other half are having holidays, into the first weekend of October. There are also some competitions that are being planned for school students. And there are a large number of workshops and demonstrations this year, all designed to make "Shaastra" an enriching experience.
"Shaastra" is being held from October 4 to 7. More details are available at the "Shaastra" website: www.shaastra.iitm.ac.in
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
