Science Day

National Science Day Related Links Introduction History Time to celebrate Introduction: Rashtriya Vigyan Evam Prodoyogiki Sanchar Parishad (RVPSP) (National Council for Science & Technology Communication) of the Ministry of Science and Technology celebrates National Science day (NSD) to popularise the benefits of scientific knowledge and pratical appropriation. Various activities are organized on the day like debates, quiz competitions, exhibitions, lectures, etc. , in which college students, school students and teachers too participate.

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Every year a different theme is selected and all the forth programmes and activities are based around that theme. The day is celebrated to honour Nobel laureate Sir C. V. Raman for his invention of the ‘Raman effect’ on 28th February 1928. Whole nation takes the honour of thanking all the scientists for their remarkable contributions and dedication on this occasion. The day attracts many young minds and motivates to take up science as their career. The celebrations of this day include showcasing the country’s competence in the field of science. Science has played very important role in transforming society.

The events on this day reminds the importance of science; thus inspire people of all ages to work in the field of science, engineering and technology. Sir C. V. Raman was honoured with the first prestigious Nobel Award in Physics for the country in 1930. Hence the National Science Day holds great significance for Indian Science and scientific community. National Science Day brings an opportunity to focus on issues related to science centre stage. The activities organized on the occasion bring public face to face with the issues of great concern.

People interact with the science fraternity for mutual benefit. National Science Day is observed to spread the message of importance of science and its application among the people and to accelerate the pace of development. Science has contributed a lot towards welfare of humanity. Raman Effect Raman effect or Raman scattering as it is popular known as is an inelastic scattering of a photon. When light is scattered from an atom or molecule, most photons are elastically scattered with almost the same energy (frequency) and wavelength as the incident photons.

But a small fraction of the photons is scattered by excitation. The frequency of scattered photons is lower than the frequency of the incident photons. Feb 28th is our National Science day ! This day, in the year 1928, C. V. Raman announced to the world his famous discovery, a discovery which would earn him a Nobel prize. You can read about his work in the presentation speech that preceded his nobel lecture. Some excerpts: The diffusion of light is an optical phenomenon, which has been known for a long time. A ray of light is not perceptible unless it strikes the eye directly.

If, however, a bundle of rays of light traverses a medium in which extremely fine dust is present, the ray of light will scatter to the sides and the path of the ray through the medium will be discernible from the side. We can represent the course of events in this way; the small particles of dust begin to oscillate owing to electric influence from the ray of light, and they form centres from which light is disseminated in all directions. The wavelength, or the number of oscillations per second, in the light thus diffused is here the same as in the original ray of light.

But this effect has different degrees of strength for light with different wavelengths. It is stronger for the short wavelengths than for the long ones, and consequently it is stronger for the blue part of the spectrum than for the red part. Hence if a ray of light containing all the colours of the spectrum passes through a medium, the yellow and the red rays will pass through the medium without appreciable scattering, whereas the blue rays will be scattered to the sides. This effect has received the name of the “Tyndall effect”.

Lord Rayleigh, who has made a study of this effect, has put forward the hypothesis that the blue colours of the sky and the reddish colouring that is observed at sunrise and sunset is caused by the diffusion of light owing to the fine dust or the particles of water in the atmosphere. The blue light from the sky would thus be light-scattered to the sides, while the reddish light would be light that passes through the lower layers of the atmosphere and which has become impoverished in blue rays owing to scattering.

Later, in 1899, Rayleigh threw out the suggestion that the phenomenon in question might be due to the fact that the molecules of air themselves exercised a scattering effect on the rays of light. In 1914 Cabannes succeeded in showing experimentally that pure and dustless gases also have the capacity of scattering rays of light. But a closer examination of scattering in different substances in solid, liquid, or gaseous form showed that the scattered light did not in certain respects exactly follow the laws which, according to calculation, should hold good for the Tyndall effect.

The hypothesis which formed the basis of this effect would seem to involve, amongst other things, that the rays scattered to the sides were polarized. This, however, did not prove to be exactly the case. This divergence from what was to be expected was made the starting point of a searching study of the nature of scattered light, in which study Raman was one of those who took an active part. Raman sought to find the explanation of the anomalies in asymmetry observed in the molecules.

During these studies of his in the phenomenon of scattering, Raman made, in 1928, the unexpected and highly surprising discovery that the scattered light showed not only the radiation that derived from the primary light but also a radiation that contained other wavelengths, which were foreign to the primary light. (Image Courtesy : http://www. photonics. cusat. edu/Article5. html) The National Science day speech of President of India is available here. He starts off with My greetings to all of you.

I am indeed very happy to talk to you on the occasion of National Science Day, which is celebrated on the 28th of February every year, the day in the year 1930, Nobel Laureate Sir CV Raman announced a landmark discovery which is finding applications today in the area of continuous wave all-silicon laser. On this day, the nation pays tribute and expresses its gratitude to all the scientists who have made our dream of using the science and scientific discoveries as vehicles for economic development, a reality. Celebration of Science will attract many young children to take up science as a career.

This is the day, our Scientists may like to rededicate themselves to create high quality scientific research output from India and make the nation proud. Science day is the day to remind us that the important ingredient for societal transformation would mainly come from science. and then goes on to talk about the usual pet topics which are so dear to him – Solar cells and other alternatives that are being explored in energy research. No pure science here though which in a way is what I expected .. Indian science, in my opinion, is at crossroads.

There is a lot which remains to be done – many tasks waiting for scientists of different hues and world views to take them up. And India with its diversity and intellectual potential has no excuse for not getting them done. To quote the concluding words of this years budget speech, The young people of India are building castles, it may appear that those castles are in the air, but as Henry David Thoreau said: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. ” It is our duty to put the foundations on which the young can build their castles. via nanopolitan ) Ads by Google labOnLaptop Experience a real-time lab on PC Bring lab session home -virtual lab www. labOnLaptop. com Posted by nayagam Filed in India, Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Science 15 Comments » Like Be the first to like this post. 15 Responses to “National Science Day(Celebrating Raman)” 1. Aswin Says: March 2, 2006 at 5:56 pm Hi, I just read some of the older posts in your blog…great man! I refrain from posting anything that is even seemingly technical as it may be revolting to many. Hope u keep up ur enthu for such posts!! U in M. Sc(integ) of IITK?? Reply 2. nayagam Says: March 4, 2006 at 12:22 pm

Aswin:U in M. Sc(integ) of IITK?? Yep, I am in my final year. And about technical articles, I do try to be as simple as possible, but as I’ve realised lately, it’s a very difficult thing to be non-technical and still be accurate enough to convey the essence of a subject. I hope I’ll become better with time. And, yeah, thank you- I hope you liked my posts.. Reply 3. jyoti Says: February 18, 2007 at 10:55 pm I think lots of importance should be given to the science. Yes it is the only wepon through which we can remove all the superstitions from the peoples mind and can give best of the knowledge to the world. Reply 4. Gowri Says:

February 25, 2007 at 12:46 am Its amazing that an Indian scientist of our times has done us proud by winning the nobel prize for Physics for his Raman Effect by entirely studying in India. I think he deserves to be celebrated a lot more. Children here are not as familar with the names of Indian scientists as they are with foreign scientists names. Our text books highlight the achievements of scientists of western countries only. Children should be made aware of the contributions of Indian scientists so that they feel proud of their country & feel motivated to pursue higher education in science. Reply 5. nayagam Says:

February 25, 2007 at 5:34 am Its amazing that an Indian scientist of our times has done us proud by winning the nobel prize for Physics for his Raman Effect by entirely studying in India. I think he deserves to be celebrated a lot more. I will agree with you. But, I would add that understanding Raman effect is a greater tribute to Raman than celebrating him blindly. Science often needs people who are good at questioning what came before them and those who are good at thinking beyond what has been already done. It needs those who can balance their scepticism with wonder, curiosity with maturity, humility with self-confidence.

And the best way to develop science in our country is to encourage such a curiosity in our children. Reply 6. sargam malhotra Says: December 17, 2007 at 7:22 pm Hey, I AM SARGAM, I LIKED THIS ARTICAL VERY MUCH I AM JUST IN 11th standerd i had many subjects but nothing is more intresting then the deep science of India Reply 7. Arbaz Ahmed Says: February 27, 2008 at 6:58 pm We have to Be thankful to sir cv raman he got Nobel Prize in 1930. but stil from 1930 why doen’t we get any Nobel. from coming Science day we will not only celebrate we will do hard work to make more miracle Reply 8. Dr. Madhu Phull Says:

February 28, 2008 at 10:57 am Yes it is true that we have not been able to get any Noble Prize since 1930 and we need to work hard to bring glory to Indian science, but proabaly more important is making science as way of living. Thinking logically and rationally. Even if we are not able to get any Noble prize but if our masses develop the capability to use the available knowledge for benefit of mankind and harness scientific information for making the earth a safer place to live, I hope we will be able to achieve the objectives of celebrating National Science Day. Reply 9. K. Mallick Says: February 28, 2008 at 12:13 pm

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