Education woes

All it took for Emily Cummins to deliver a solar powered fridge was knowing her basics in science. That cooling happens when there is evaporation, just like when you sweat! Student inventor and entrepreneur Emily is now known in parts of Africa that she visited during the trials as the ‘Fridge lady’. All thanks to her cheap, simple invention.

Employing a combination of conduction and convection, the refrigerator requires no electricity and can be made from commonly available materials like cardboard, sand, and recycled metal. Simply place perishable foods or temperature-sensitive medications in the solar refrigerator’s interior metal chamber and seal it. In-between the inner and outer chamber, organic material like sand, wool or soil is then saturated with water. As the sun warms the organic material, water evaporates, reducing the temperature of the inner chamber to a cool, 6 ºC [43 ºF] for days at a time!

Schools in your city have science exhibitions and you can see students displaying many exhibits. But chances are you will find the same ubiquitous volcanoes, solar systems, human body models, etc. Not to demean these, but we need to do some introspection why we do not see more meaningful exhibits.

The answer could be as simple as: we do not train our kids to think independently. Books and teachers and now, the Internet simply help them download info. The basics are buried. How do we correct this? Can it be done in a piecemeal manner as is being done by some educationists? Or do we need a thorough rehaul of the system, initiated by the ministry?