Science Museums: An eye opener for school children

The opportunities for children & school students to understand complex systems has become easier with technology (television, internet, etc).

It's very difficult to give the right answer to some of the simple questions they ask.
In my experience, only very few parents & relatives encourage children to ask questions and atleast try to give answers.

Since, I am a research scholar and I plan for a research/teaching career, I do case studies on the state of education (primary/secondary school/college, etc) & more specifically on Engineering education in India & abroad through discussions and try to understand the thought process among children, students, school teachers, research scholars, and professors.

Having interacted, I find that given the same problem/question, the thought process is different for people from different background (age, social, geographical, etc). I find many people (older) just quitting without giving a try. But, school children in the age group of (5-15) give a try and ask more questions to solve the problem.

In my opinion, if children are encouraged to ask questions and give the right environment to find answers themselves through exhibitions, science centres, books, etc, I think child will chose their career and come with flying colours.

Recently, I had been to Birla Planetarium (near Anna Univ.), Chennai just to know what's out there. They have a dome structure where they artificially create a sky with stars. It's about 30+ mins. of show. It's about cosmos (earth, universe, galaxy). They try to explain how earth is formed, why eclipses occur and so on along with the mythological (Hindu) explanation.

A couple and thier 5 year old son were seated just behind me. During the show, the kid was asking questions after questions which were interesting and difficult to answer. The father was patient enough and answered his questions in whatever way he can.

The Govt. of India has setup science centres (National Council of Science Museums) at various places in India. Birla planetarium is the one in Chennai. 3-4 hrs is sufficient to cover all the items in Birla Planetarium.

It reminds me of my childhood when I had been to Visvesvaraya Industrial & Technological Museum in Bangalore and Nehru Science Centre in Bombay. These are two interesting places which had greatly influenced me in choosing an Engineering career.

These exhibitions help school students to get to know how things work in reality on what they learn from books.

It's worth to spend a full day at both of these places and learn from the exhibitions. In fact, Govt. has spent huge amount of money and time in setting up the right experiment to explain the concept/idea/law.

:)