Ask HN: Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students

#21

Post by ced » Thu, Feb 05, 2009, 12:29 PM UTC

I'm in a similar position, but I'm in a Tibetan refugee camp. The children and teenagers here already get (limited but sufficient) food and shelter, so it's a good place for potential teaching.

Got an email address? Also, it'd be nice of you to tell us how it went afterwards.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students

#22

Post by fzkl » Thu, Feb 05, 2009, 1:25 PM UTC

revorad wrote: post #19

Awesome stuff. Thanks for doing this. What age are these kids? What's the local language?

Kids are between 12-15. Kannada is the local language.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students

#23

Post by fzkl » Thu, Feb 05, 2009, 1:27 PM UTC

paraschopra wrote: post #20

Which area of India does this school belong to? Your initiative looks interesting

Bangalore. The state of govt. schools is pretty much the same in most parts of the country. You could always lend a helping hand irrespective of where you are. You could try approaching the school head master directly or you could go to the local rotary club and check if you can assist them in an way.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students

#24

Post by mhb » Thu, Feb 05, 2009, 2:22 PM UTC

The Exploratorium Cookbooks are expensive, but full of lots of great ideas: http://store.exploratorium.edu/browse.cfm/4,19.html

The Exploratorium Snackbooks are also very good.

The Exploratorium Quarterly magazine was also great. Although it is not published any more, I see that you can buy copies at abebooks. You should search for anything with Exploratorium in the title. It is probably worth buying.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students

#25

Post by TrevorJ » Thu, Feb 05, 2009, 3:56 PM UTC

I don't know about India but in the states you can get model rockets or those pop-bottle water rocket kits. Maybe some creative rigging with a postage scale to measure forces and demonstrate the equal/opposite reaction of throwing matter (water) out the back of the rocket at high speed?

Electromagnetic stuff: here's instructions on making a motor out of some wire, a magnet and a double-A battery. http://www.ehow.com/how_4422383_make-battery-motor.html

Other thoughts would be to check out instructibles.com, it's not geared towards science but a lot of the projects outlined could easily be used to demonstrate principles.