The start of New Year _ January updates

Today, I am going to share with you some events that happened in past few days. To start the year with inspire program is always a cherishing one. I and my father had attended the inspire project evaluation program at Govt. Girls Higher Secondary School, Ernakulam on January 27, 2018. Biju sir, Chief coordinator of Inspire Programs, Ernakulam district is a good friend of my father and it is nice to join him in the evaluation of projects of the little ones. This program is funded by central government and the program consist of Rs. 5000/- as project fund per student from different schools in the state to present their innovative ideas in the district levels. The event definitely holds its name. INSPIRE inspires the students to come up with novel ideas that will be supported if found economically and socially feasible. I have selected two of them for state level presentation. See some photos of the students whom I evaluated in the phase one selection in Ernakulam district.





Duty Certificate

Second event is definitely a moment to share. Our second-year students had gone for a field visit alone with M Phil and research scholars on January 26 to 28, 2018. I feel that they had a wonderful time together and the photos speaks volumes about their enjoyment. Attaching here with photos of the same.





Third program is to be explained vividly. Super blood moon day on January 31, 2018. We department of physics organized a sky watch event at Trivandrum observatory. Let me explain to you what super blood blue moon day means. The difference between moon and super Moon is just like the difference between man and superman. Just joking... Full Moon which we use to see in our life is around 12 percent smaller than the full moon observered on this very day. Hence, we call January 31, 2018 Full Moon as Super Moon. Now to know about blood moon, you should be aware of what is lunar eclipse and scattering of light. Lunar eclipse happens when earth is aligned in between moon and sun along a straight line. The earth's shadow passes over the full moon and we have an event called lunar eclipse. Sun, Earth and Moon doesn’t align in straight line every month since they are not the same plane. During Lunar eclipse when they all align in a straight line; the sun rays could partially reach the moon surface by bending of light around earth. Light gets scattering. As you all know Different Colors of light- blue, green and red scatter in different ways. The more energetic ones that is the blue rays gets scattered much than red. So red rays from sun reached the moon surface, illuminating it and resulting in red moon. So now we have the Super Blood Moon. It takes another 150 years to view the same type of event again. So, this event is definitely once to be reported in the history of my blog. Now in between, let me tell you why this event is also referred to as blue moon. If two full moons are seen in a month we call it as blue moon. In this month viz January 2 and 31 were those days where we saw full moons. Dr. V Biju, Director, Observatory along with faculty, research scholars and students from Department of Physics, organized a sky watch event on the same day. Around 500 participants were present to see the event. As observatory is the highest place in Trivandrum city, I should say that we were the closest persons viewing the perigee of moon (Moon closest to Earth). Three telescopes were also arranged to view them much closer. I had the privilege to interact with tiny little ones who's aspires to know science of Super Blue Blood moon. I know for sure that I had a nice time interacting with enthusiastic, full of action, spirited students. Attaching some photos of the same.



















Last but not least let me add this event too in this blog post. February 2 is my daughter's birthday. Like all of your parents, I took a day off to be with her. Attaching some photo of the same.



Thank you
With regards


Sibi

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