Southern Students Keep Scientific Inquiry Alive

Hyderabad: “We have come a long way from baking soda volcanoes,” Sangareddy district collector Pravinya said, after visiting stalls at the Southern India Science Fair that was inaugurated on Monday. What filled the classrooms and corridors were working ideas from teachers and students who spoke the language of space debris, electrostatics, optics, artificial intelligence and energy recovery.

The five-day fair at The Gaudium School, Kollur campus, has brought students and teachers from six southern states at a time when school science in Telangana is being pushed beyond memorised experiments. Pravinya linked what she saw on the floor to the state’s larger vision for experiential learning under Telangana Rising 2047 and the movement across rooms revealed how far school projects have travelled.

“Space debris means nothing but space junk accumulated in space,” said A. Akshay, a class 10 student from Siddharth Rural High School, Machavaram in Medak district, standing next to his electrostatic space debris capture system.

“They travel at higher speeds and can easily damage satellites.” His model used electrostatic forces to attract debris between 0.1 cm and 10 cm in size. He spoke about protecting satellites and future missions, then pointed to certificates on the board. A district first prize. A state second prize. A nomination to Isro’s Yuvika programme.

A few rooms away, another student display dealt with waste that people see every day. A Tamil Nadu team presented a urine power generation system that demonstrated electricity generation from human urine.

The model mapped possible use in schools, hospitals, bus stands and colleges. The contrast between orbital debris and human waste felt natural inside the fair as both came from the same question students kept asking. What can be done with what we usually ignore.

Naveen Nicholas, director of school education, said “Science education must stay experiential and inquiry-based.” He spoke about state-level training, lab manuals and exposure programmes that allow government school students to work with real tools.

“Platforms like the Southern India Science Fair give students national-level exposure and mentorship, and district education officers and SCERT staff must make sure students from nearby government schools visit the exhibition every day.”

Hyderabad also found a spot among the stalls. CMR High School, Hyderabad brought IoT-based smart petrol sensing and an adulterated fuel detection system to the fair. Adil Abdul Malik, a Class 9 student, introduced the model developed with teammates Mohammad Muzakir and Syed Nasiruddin. “It is designed to prevent petrol malpractices and is created for the benefit of the common man.” He explained that the project tackles two common problems.

“The first is short fueling, where you receive less fuel than you pay for,” he said, adding that even “50 to 100 millilitres” makes “a very huge profit” when done repeatedly. The second issue, he said, was adulteration.

“Adulterated petrol is a mixture of chemicals like ethanol, methanol, naphtha, kerosene, diesel and water,” Adil said, pointing to sensors mounted inside the model tank. The system, he said, shows fuel volume in real time, flags adulteration through sensor readings, and sends data to a phone or laptop. “The complete prototype cost around Rs.1,500,” he said.

“Even if we scale it up, it would not cost more than Rs.3,000, so it can be installed easily in vehicles.”