Bad News – Dome hall heating up.
Good news – We understood about radiation
The need to understand about ‘Radiation’ came from the need to make our Dome cooler.
IT ALL INSIDE ME”.
Yes its all about me and my experiences. A Jatre on radiation – where all the answers came from kids, most of them and not read physics or heat science. But most have experienced it in many different forms. The session was about asking questions, linking various questions, encouraging them to think and question, and finally share some more information (we call it our experience and knowledge:).
So it began with recalling experiences – When you stand at a distance from the fire, why do you feel hot? What happens when you stand near heated coil? Kids shared – heat moves to us, wind becomes hot and comes to us, vibrations of heat waves, hot rays travel to us. When water is kept for heating, does the water in surface carry same heat, as in bottom? When we stir water, what will be the temperature of the water? Why do we feel cool when a fan is ON? Does the fan give cool air or does it create a rotation of air to bring coolness? – That’s Convection which makes the effect by moving/stirring/rotation. When is a spoon kept in water while heating after certain time what happens to the spoon? Does the heat transfer to spoon? – That’s Conduction. Why do we feel hot when we stand unders sun? Does sun rays carry heat? What all sun rays carry? What is around the earth? What do sunrays do when they fall on earth? Why some rays are absorbed and some rays are reflected back? Does human absorb or reflect? Does black absorb, while white reflects? How many portions of the earth receive sun rays? What is global warming?
Why does our dome get very hot? And the Eureka happened, the churning for 45 minutes was enough to explore radiation. All answers became alive – Because the roof sheet ABSORBS the heat and send to the ground and heat is observed by mud flooring. So we need to block the rays from reaching floor by creating a cloud between roof and earth. Thank you Hasmukh for sparkling us with ‘radiation’. The one word was enough for us to get excited and explore the concept of radiation. And what better way than experiencing and exploring ourselves the effects of radiation. We could not only understand the heat in Dome, we could also connect with ‘greenhouse effects” and Global warming!
As the kids recalled their own experience – we injected the knowledge about a rainbow, Sunrays, Ultraviolet and Infrared, Night vision, ALBEDO value, properties of objects, Global Warming, reflection and Absorption and of course RADIATION!