GYAN about WHAT – WHY – HOW ? Archive

There has been a surge in STEM based workshops for children in the age group of 4 – 14 years, since the past few years. A lot of interest and curiosity has also been generated by these new age STEM workshops, giving rise to questions, such as “Will it be too much for children to handle?”, “Will the children be able to comprehend?”, “What is the need for STEM education in school, when children would learn about it in college?”, “How is STEM education employed?”, “Why is STEM education needed for children?”, “Which is the ideal age to enroll children?”,

As a kid when I felt down, my mother used to say “Cheer up kid, after all, you are a B +ve. And I used to think that all the positive people in the world had B+ve blood group and all the pessimists had B –ve. I stuck on to that idea for quite a while before realizing how silly it was. Later in my science classes, I learned the types of the proteins and sugars, inherited from our parents, which determine our blood group. These sugars found (or expressed) on the surface of red blood cells define blood types

Sunlight is consisting of multiple wavelengths of light. It includes wavelengths of light which is not visible to us, such as infrared and ultraviolet light, as well as the visible spectrum. Reflection, refraction and dispersion of sunlight inside water droplets in the atmosphere, causes the formation of rainbow which appears as a spectrum of light in the sky. Rainbow appears as a circular arc with various colors and it always seen in the section of sky which is directly opposite the sun. A rainbow is not a physical object and it cannot be approached. It does not exist at one

In the case of normal pregnancy, a sperm cell from male fertilizes an egg cell from a woman. The fertilized egg then gets attached to the wall of the uterus and starts to develop into a baby. But in some cases sperm cells fail to fertilize the egg and the embryo will not be formed and pregnancy will not be happening. In such situations people make use of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) to help women become pregnant. In vitro fertilization (IVF) is one of the common ART methods. In the IVF procedure, egg cell is fertilized outside the body and

You might have tried to freeze water in your fridge. But have you ever noticed that hot water freezes faster than cold water? If not, try it yourself. This phenomenon where hot water freezes faster than cold water is called Mpemba effect. The Mpemba effect has been a well known physicist since the time of Aristotle who noticed it more than 2,000 years ago. There were many ideas since then to have been put forward to explain the same. One idea is that warm containers make better thermal contact with a refrigerator and so conducts heat more efficiently, which leads

What is the lowest temperature that you have experienced? Our body temperature is 37 degree Celsius. Room temperature is lower than that which is 25 degree Celsius. Fridges are generally at four degree Celsius and ice forms at zero degree Celsius. Can temperature go below zero degree Celsius? Yes. Temperatures below zero degree Celsius are generally measured in Kelvin scale, where 273 K is equal to zero degree Celsius. Temperature of liquid nitrogen is approximately 70 Kelvin and liquid helium is approximately 4 kelvin. As we decrease the temperature, there are many curious phenomena that happen which have significant effects

Picture Credits: Warner Bros. (Gravity, 2013)   Ever wondered? Most of the Universe is pretty empty — that’s why we call it “space” — Lol, sounds literal, right? But most of us have not thought about it that way. If I were to magically transport you someplace randomly in the cosmos, the chances are you’d be a million light years from the nearest substantial object. Evolving on a planet has warped our sense of physics. If I throw an object away from me, it comes back. That’s bizarre! It should just keep going, moving away from me at a constant