The North Bengal Science Centre (NBSC) in Matigara near Siliguri on Saturday introduced some new attractions at the park, including 38 interactive exhibits designed to make learning fun and engage visitors, especially children.
According to NBSC sources, visitors now can explore various scientific concepts through hands-on activities at the park spread over an area of 4.6 acres. The new exhibits include the Archimedes’ screw, a pulley chair, a touch concert, an open-air gym, and a laminar water corridor.
Biswajit Kundu, the education officer of NBSC, said: “Now visitors can learn, how the reversible hydraulic machine was created to draw water from the canal. Not through animation, but students will be able to see and feel the Archimedes’ screw device that is used to extract water, by hand. The screw was modelled by the students at the science centre’s Innovation Hub.”
He mentioned about a touch concert in which “whenever you touch the sculpture of a particular musical instrument, musical notes are being generated.”
The open-air gym has been designed to combine physical exercise with an engaging outdoor experience. Another important notable addition is the laminar water corridor, which showcases the principles of laminar flow visually appealingly.
Ritabrata Biswas, the project coordinator of NBSC, said visitors at the centre will see the laminar water corridor for the first time.
“There is an innovation hub where students can apply their thinking and conduct hands-on scientific experiments. Not only can these new scientific things be seen, but the scientific reasons behind them have also been explained to the visitors,” said Biswas.
Along with these exhibits, the NBSC has also taken the initiative to disseminate knowledge about trees by putting QR codes on trees in the centre.
Biswajit said that initially, they have put up the QR codes on around 10 trees. “But soon, QR codes will be put up on all the trees, especially on the medicinal plants to spread awareness. There are hundreds of species of trees at the centre. The visitors see them but most of them are unaware of the variants and other details,” he said.
“Therefore, we, along with our students, took the initiative to make people aware of these trees. People nowadays are familiar with QR codes and this is why we chose this popular method. This will help students with their studies as well,” Biswajit added.
He also stated that they have prepared a tree database and uploaded the data to the official website of NBSC.
“The data includes scientific names of plants, tree variations, their uses, along with effects and side effects of medicinal plants. Whenever a visitor scans the QR code, he immediately gets all the data loaded in the website,” Biswajit said.
