Inventor Arvind Gupta has devoted his life to popularizing
science with Indian children, by teaching them how to make educational
toys from trash
Children in the First World have a lot of choice when it comes to
scientific toys. In fact, there are whole stores devoted to selling
things like robotics kits, ant farms, and simple microscopes.
In the developing world, however, such fancy toys are relatively
scarce. So, what's an adult to do if they want to get the local children
interested in the sciences? Well, in the case of Arvind Gupta, they
show the kids how to make scientific toys from trash.
Gupta's story began in the 70s, when he was an engineering student at
the Indian Institute of Technology. While he was there, he volunteered
to teach the children of the mess staff, who couldn't afford a formal
education.
Upon graduation, he went on to work at Tata Motors, where he helped
to build trucks. After five years of doing so, however, he decided that
it wasn't the career for him. In 1978, he took a one-year leave from his
job, and took part in the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program. "The
objective was to make science fun and exciting for village children
using simple, low-cost materials available in their environment," he
told us. "This experience had a profound impact on me. I thought it was
much more satisfying than making trucks."
Gupta proceeded to devote his life to designing toys that demonstrate
scientific principles, that children can build for themselves out of
cheap or free parts. He's written numerous instructional books on the
subject, starting with 1986's
Matchstick Models and other Science Experiments, which has been reprinted in 12 languages.
Today, he is part of the four-person team that runs the Children's
Science Centre, at India's Pune University. Together, they have designed
approximately 800 trash-based educational toys ... so far. Instructions
and explanations for all of the toys are available copyright-free
through their Toys-from-Trash website, as are all of their books, and
over 250 linked YouTube videos.
"Every day over 50,000 children and teachers across the world watch
these videos," said Gupta. "Thousands of books are downloaded every day
and this fills our hearts with hope and joy. We feel privileged to be
able to share our work with at least some children across the world."
Out of all of the toys, there are a few that have proven particularly popular. One of those is
Matchstick Mecanno,
in which little bits of rubber bicycle valve tube and matchsticks are
used to make 2D and 3D shapes. Other favorites include the
Simple Electric Motor and the
Levitating Pencil, in which ring magnets are used to keep a spinning pencil floating in the air.
One of his young students, a girl named Hamsa Padmanabhan, found the
pencil toy particularly fascinating. "She wrote a 12-page scientific
paper on it, which won the second Intel International Award of US$2,500.
Today a minor planet is named after Hamsa," he told us. "Another girl,
Durga Jetty, made the
Bottle Turbine which won her 0.6 million Indian Rupees! This is quite a feat."
Needless to say, however, Arvind isn't in it for the money, nor for
the chance to become famous. Instead, he simply wishes to nurture a
quality that he believes all children possess.
"Every child is born a scientist," he said. "We kill this innate
curiosity by rote learning and boring state texts. If we just remove
some of the authoritarian structures in schools, children will naturally
gravitate to science - simply because science is fun and exciting."
An example of one of the instructional videos can be seen below.
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