Making the history of Science integral to Science instruction in primary and secondary schools as a way to create deeper understanding and engagement with Science.

Science instruction today is mostly about memorising facts and figures in biology and chemistry and memorising formulae and applying them in addition to the above in Physics.

A substantial percentage of the Indian populace has learnt about the theory of gravitation or the atomic hypothesis or about electricity and magnetism. But most of what is learnt is lost after reproducing it in exams.

The complexity of the subject at hand does not probably lend it self to be understood by a high school student and it may be argued that it is because of this that at that stage a student is only introduced to the facts and figures of the world of science and not to the skepticism, the logical argumentation , ingenuity and the sheer genius which lies at the heart of it .

A question may be asked is that if the result of science instruction is only for students to memorise facts and forget them later then why go through the effort in the first place. At present, India is seeing a surge in the adoption of blind faith. Many who believe in these blind practices like Feng Shui , Reiki, Vastu or some spiritual baba or the other would surely have studied science during their days at school. If one takes an average sample of people, there will probably be a much much greater number of people who do not appreciate or remotely understand the power of science and what it has given to the world than those who abide by it and appreciate science for what it is and what it has given to the world. The proportion of people who truly understand the scientific process and why it really works and the level of razor sharp precision and insight that if can offer is probably an even smaller subset of the latter group.

This is truly a very sad state of affairs. Science being the force that it is, something that is a pillar on which the modern world stands is not only something that forms the back bone of the global economy but also holds tremendous potential to empower people , the failure of the education system to help students assimilate and connect to Science is truly a colossal one. 

That being true, would it not be of value to integrate the genesis of scientific discoveries in Science classrooms. How can this be done ? The direction in general is, instead of circumscribing the length and breadth of the world of science from Ptolemy to Einstein at a superficial, factual level, it would be far more useful to pick up only a few episodes from the history of Science and re-trace the path that was taken upto the point of culmination of those episodes.

Take for example Heliocentricism. Most books just talk about the fact that the greeks came up with a geo centric model and that the likes of Copernicus, Galileo , Tycho Brahe worked to over throw the theory. But almost no book really ever talks about how the greeks arrived at the model in the first place. How can one come to arrive at such an intricate model of the universe which could  roughly predict the movements of the heavenly bodies by just looking at them with the naked eye ? How did they even measure the movements of the heavenly bodies ? The work of Ptolemy and his contemporaries only constitutes a precursor to modern science and does not mark a huge departure from common sense. Modern science is highly formal and far removed from common sense and intuition. When our education cannot help students understand clearly about even the foundations of modern science then the merit of introducing concepts from the modern era like atomic orbital theory and photo electric effect is highly questionable. Students will only know such things at best as interesting facts but more generally as facts that must be memorised, regurgitated during exams and forgotten after that.

Instead, if science instruction can follow the development of some basic landmarks in the world of science, it would help not only make more students assimilate science as a part of their thought process but may also generate interest and inspire more students to take up research in natural sciences. Taking further the example of the Geocentric theory of the Greeks as elucidated by Ptolemy, the general direction that the science classroom could follow is to actually encourage children to observe the sky and try to come up with hypotheses themselves. Then divide them into groups to develop arguments to support one or the other hypotheses and have formal , courtroom like discussions and debates in which the teacher plays the role of the moderator. This way children learn not only about the outcome of the scientific process but are able to connect to it at a far deeper level. They develop the skill of drawing generalisations and logical arguments to support or oppose hypotheses. This process of hypotheses , observation and logical argumentation is what lies at the heart of science. Through this process the student can connect at a far deeper level to the ideas of Science, and may even get inspired and motivated to pursue it further in his/her life. But the least that one can expect is that the alienation that the common man / woman has developed to Science as a whole will reduce thus helping to buck the trend of blind faith. Also as the saying goes, knowledge is power,  it would  help to empower the individual.

As a society this will translate into more people being immune to the deceptive charms of the institutions of blind faith, feel more empowered, and become more responsible and discerning citizens of the world

Learning the subject or just learning to pass exams ?

I never let my education interfere with my learning.
                                                                  - Albert Einstein

Most of school education comes across as a little bit of a waste of time to me. For long I did not have a concrete example to substantiate this thought. Here is one I came across recently  : Raoult's law. Students are supposed to learn about this law in chemistry about partial vapor presssures of solvents in class 11 or 12 of CBSE. What they learn is a formula which defines how vapor pressure is related to the mole fraction of the solvent. In all of this there is absolutely no mention of
things that are very important from the point of view of seeing the concept as something organic, i.e natural and real, rather than an abstract concept in the air with no connection to real  life other than to pass exams.

These things are :

1. What is vapor pressure ? Why is it even important ? Can we see its effects anywhere in real life ?
2. Who studied and discovered this law ? How much time was spent on the topic before this law was discovered (In this case a good 20 years)? What kind of a person was Francois-Marie Raoult ? What was his childhood like ? Why was he interested in liquids and their vapor pressures ?
3. How can vapor pressure even be measured ? Can we not try to measure vapor pressure in the lab ? Can we see the effect of dissolving more quantity of solute on the vapor pressure of the
solvent in real time.
4. What is mole fraction ? How is it even possible to measure the number of moles in a given quantity of a particular compound ? What is this concept of mole ? Who came up with it ?

And possibly more such questions

Without such questions getting answered, it is very unfair to expect anyone to assimilate the law as a part of his / her knowledge. It is only natural that post exams the student does not remember anything about Raoult's law. This then for me is a humongous waste of effort. The student puts in all his effort to memorize the law which is akin to forcefully pushing stuff inside till the  exams and completely regurgitate it from the system once the only apparent purpose of the knowledge is served, i.e exams.

Other than reading and writing, there is really very little that is retained by the student in the whole 12 odd years of schooling. If the only  takeaway from around 8 odd years (discounting the first 4 - 5 odd years of schooling) of bone breaking effort is reading and writing and some basic social skill which would be hard to learn being only the apple of your parent's eyes, I think it is a colossal waste of time and effort.

It should not then be hard to see that there is very little connection between learning and school education as the great Einstein once pointed out. What is beyond comprehension is that this gap exists in spite of the fact that it is not really insurmountable. It does not need much more than interested teachers and a change in the outlook from expecting acceptance from the student to expecting genuine curiosity from him / her.

Angry Birds Review :

I feel Angry Birds has garnered way more success than it deserved, and I feel even team Rovio must be aware of it somewhere (More so since they did not even write the physics that was used in the game). While most people will like to back-track AB’s success to this reason or that, I am sure no one will really want to put their money on a new game being a big hit based on something really nice or cool in it.

It’s a little bit like the way cricket commentators go about their job. Any stroke that yields a boundary is more likely to be a brilliant shot than a stroke that is played brilliantly but haplessly does not yield a boundary or a six. Judgement really needs to be sepearated from eventual success or failure for it to be genuine.

It may be a fact that a lot of us find uncomfortable to face, but deep down all of us know that there is a lot of randomness behind any major success or failure.

Sometime back I had read this about the secret behind AB’s success, that a professional skier had mentioned AB as his favorite game on National television, after which it went ballistic.

Quite often there is really not too much logic behind why something goes wildly viral while something better ends up a damp squib. I really don’t think there is much sense in attributing AB’s success to its game-play value / user experience.

For starters the idea of hitting large stones with soft furry birds is very non-fun.
It would have been much more fun to hit the stack of stone / glass / wood with something hard and with a well defined shape.

I don’t exactly know the cognitive bases for this so let me use a few examples.

Impact gives a good feel with hard and slightly heavy things generally. Just imagine yourself hitting a hard cricket ball with a cricket bat, and compare that to the feel you get when you hit a soft stress ball and you might be able to see my point. Its not that you cannot play cricket with a stress ball, but it just does not feel good.

Secondly my actions do not seem to have much effect in the game and I can’t make sense of the physics. I can’t understand why some precariously poised pieces of wood and stone will refuse to budge even if hit hard with the ammunition.

It feels as if I am starting with a basic disadvantage. And quite often I get a feel of banging my head against a wall that refuses to budge. Even if the wall does give way in the end and I am rewarded, it does not qualify as a lot of fun for me.

Lastly, I am given absolutely no choice in playing new levels. If I am stuck at a certain level, until I finish it I cannot play any new level, because all un-played levels and chapters are locked, I can’t even do as much as to take a look at what interesting challenges lie ahead to get motivated about finishing the current level.


The graphics are definitely good and the sounds are a lot of fun indeed, but all in all the soul of the game is quite uncool, slow, a tad unfair and very very restrictive. How a game like this has caught people’s imagination and become one of the greatest successes in gaming history is a conundrum that I can only attribute to randomness or to the game's timing coinciding with the explosion in smart-phone penetration.

But I am open to any counter views or to the suggestion that I am differently wired for fun than a lot of poeple or to the possibility that I am missing something majorly good about AB, in which case I am eagerly waiting for soome-one to enlighten me .

Why your child should be a doctor.

After having seen many different professions, some closely and some from a little distance, I have come to the overwhelmingly decisive conclusion that being a doctor is a better profession than any other.
Let me enlist some reasons behind why I say this :
Doctors are possibly the only professionals who can easily choose to be their own bosses without too much risk. Compare that to setting up shop as a lawyer, an interior designer or an engineer (that is if at all you've ever heard of a self employed engineer.).
Being one's own boss is in itself a huge advantage. Not having to apply for leaves, not having to kow-tow to your superiors, not worrying about performance evaluations, not worrying about reaching office on time etc etc etc.
There is indeed a little risk involved in terms of the possibly disastrous consequences of goof-ups (read damage to the health of patients), but compare that to the risk of a business not kicking off or the uncertainties that are a part of business and this risk would become much more acceptable.
The risk of the practice not kicking off is also a part of the equation but again if being a doctor is compared to a running a business then it is also possibly the most risk free business of all.
Second, social recognition. As compared to any other professional, doctors are also possibly the most socially visible of all.

As my friend put it nicely, anyone would immediately know if a doctor lives in their next apartment. No one would know so easily that a software engineer who is the chief architect of their most favorite piece of software lives next to them.

Third, the doctors profession is the least alienated of all.
An engineer works in an environment that is much bigger than himself, and in which he / she features as only a small cog.
A technological innovation by a researcher sitting in an obscure lab somewhere or a new technological innovation or software upgrade by a software vendor, or changing economic trends can all have fundamental effects on a software engineers profession.

To add to that he / she works on a piece of software made by some faceless entity and might take instructions from a telephonic voice sitting in some other part of the world.

The doctor's profession deals with a subject that is right in front of him / her. The human body. He can directly see the consequences of his actions in his / her patient.
If the patient does not get treated he gets to hear the whining from him, if he does, he gets to receive his blessings.

Alienation is a big killer and major de-motivating factor in professional lives.
The absence of alienation is a huge huge plus.

The only scientific / engineering profession which offers respectability is being a professor in a good university.
Having seen many doctorates with stellar academic records around me, I can say that getting good faculty positions is a really really tough ask. I have seen these brilliant people really struggle about finding good jobs in the academia, mainly because there are not many on offer. The supply is much lesser than the demand.

Fourth, getting to study in an institute with a healthy sex ratio.
The impression that I get generally that in a country like India, girls prefer the medical profession much more than engineering.
Importantly, girls who become doctors are more likely to more responsible as people. They have to be their profession demands it from them.
It is not uncommon to see a lot of doctors getting girl friends during their college days, as compared to engineers for whom girls are like dew drops in a desert.
Well I did not include arts and science graduates in this because as it is making a decent career through these disciplines is a really uphill battle, so they sort of deserve the perk of having cute girls around them before they are thrown out into the big bad professional world , where they don't stand too much of a chance as compared to the others.
Fifth, and this is a slightly sick (literally ) reason to choose to be a doctor.
The fact that one gets to see so many sick people day in and day out makes one feel, oh alright I am not really doing that bad myself. (Thats more of a joke than a genuine reason :)).

Lastly, one is directly in control of one's health and other members of one's family.
If anyone falls sick in the family the doctor is right there with them, 24 / 7, notionally if not physically.

Given this litany of reasons which go in favor of choosing the medical sciences as a profession, I have decided, that whether through inspiration or by force, my children are going to be doctors. What they do with their passions is a different matter altogether, and I shall make sure that if my son / daughter loves physics or math or fashion designing , he / she get ample opportunities to do physics or math or fashion designing as a serious hobby. But as a profession I shall make sure that he / she does not choose to be a scientist or an engineer or a designer or a musician, or any other thing than being a doctor.

Looking back I feel it is mainly because my parents were doctors that they could derive the patience and strength to endure the tantrums and the sheer stubbornness maintained by me in not succumbing to the education system and refusing to take studies seriously. As compared to me, my parents seem to have an unending ocean of patience with people and with situations.

Ironically it seems that the profession that revolves around sickness is the healthiest of them after all :).

A character from Knowledge Adventure's game Jumpstart singing Elvis :

Learning games ? or Learning as a game ....

Off late I have been spending some time playing with my little niece.
She is quite fond of my IPhone and likes to generally fiddle with it and explore the apps that are there on it.
I gleaned an interesting observation from her experiences with my IPhone and one which is relevant to the nature of video games. It also corroborates with the Educationist Seymour Papert's views about gaming and education.
My niece tried playing the IPhone version of the popular game Spore,published by Electronic Arts. The game-play is not something that a four year should find out of reach, since it only involves tilting the phone to make a creature floating about in water, to avoid monsters around and eat some bugs to increase one's points.
Then there was puzzle game called Iced-in which I should concede was beyond her grasp and rightly so, she also tried her hand at a roller coaster racing game by a company called Digital Chocolate.
There was a extremely popular flute application called Ocarina by Smule, the IPhone camera, the timer in the built-in clock application that she also tried.

Now to appreciate the point I am about to make, try making a mental list of her possible favorites from amongst these, which one would be the most liked by her and which one the least.

All common sense probably would say that the Spore game by EA would beat all the others all ends up and that comparing the timer application with a game from EA would be ludicrous.
Now let me list out what the actual list looked like :

1. Pass code locking feature in the Phone (oops , this is not even an app, I forgot to mention it.)
2. The built in Camera.
3. Ocarina.
4. Spore.
5. Roller coaster.
6. IPhone timer.

Pass code locking feature in the IPhone is a feature with which one can set a pass code to lock the Phone. When one activates the phone one has to slide a widget software widget across the screen for the pass code screen to appear. Then one has to enter the pass code and the phone is unlocked.
When I taught my niece how to go through with this process of unlocking the phone, she learnt it quite easily. On each successful attempt at unlocking the phone, one could see her face brighten up. After a certain number of times, she started asking me to let her do the unlocking thing again, in the middle of playing spore or something. The fact that she had memorized the pass code and learnt the process to unlock it made the simple feature into a game for her.
As compared to Spore, this held her interest to a much greater extent.
And frankly I could not understand how Spore on the IPhone could hold anyone's attention beyond 2 mins. It could not hold mine for sure. I could not manage to play the game for more than 2 mins. I did not find anything interesting in it other than the beautiful graphics.
This case shows in a rather simple way, that learning is itself an interesting and enjoyable activity far more than looking at interesting graphics or hearing interesting sounds.
And that is precisely the reason why I have a very strong vision that learning games, when they are made can capture a market that can be many many times bigger than the market for entertainment games, whether hardcore or casual.
The reason I use the phrase 'learning games, when they are made..' is because I have not come across a game which can be called educational or one that helps in learning in the real sense. And I have played the most popular so-called educational games that are on offer, and could not find any content which would enable anyone to genuinely learn anything and make them hooked on to it.
Imagine a gaming genre with which people , children and adults alike can learn things in an enjoyable way, things that are meaningful and useful to them.
That is when gaming will start making a real impact on the lives of people and not just provide them with light entertainment. Imagine the kind of demand there would be for such a genre. Maybe 10 times that of casual games ? Maybe more ?.
But it would take a lot of effort, both in terms of marketing, ideation and development to make the first such genuine learning game and that really means a publisher who has a deep pocket and conviction about a game like this.
Its wait, watch and hope until then.

Cultural melange : Anur Ram Puniyani
Father: Punjabi,but no roots in Punjab. Came to India from Pakistan after Partition, lived in Vidarbha district of Maharashtra, heavy cultural influence of Vidarbha.
Mother Gujarati, never been to Gujarat. Brought up in Amravati and Aurangabad (small towns in Maharashtra ), very fluent in Marathi and steeped in Marathi culture.
Self :Anur Puniyani, First name Sinhalese (Srilankan), which means lover of peace. Was given this name by a friend of Parents who was Sinhalese.
Second name Puniyani, very rare Punjabi name that sounds much more Sindhi than Punjabi.
Born and brought up in IIT Bombay, had friends spanning the cultural gamut. Right from Tamilians, Maharastrians, Kannadigas, Goanese, Andhraites, Assamese, Bengali, Oriya, Punjabis, UPites.
Who am I then ?
Well I had responded thus when I was asked this question by a fellow traveller, as a 14 year old boy travelling on a train with friends, in a very filmi and cocky way :
Insaan hoon bas (I'm just a Human being :)). Still makes me laugh when I recollect the incident.