RRCAT kept up its tradition by celebrating the National Science Day on Saturday, 24th February 2007. For more than a decade, RRCAT has been celebrating the National Science Day on the last Saturday of the month of February to commemorate the Nobel Prize winning discovery of "Raman effect" by Dr. Chandrasekhar Venkat Raman.
Invitations had been sent to a large number of schools in Indore district, calling for students of classes XI and XII (science) to visit RRCAT. In response to the invitations, a total of 1460 students from 87 schools turned up. Each school was assigned an escorting employee of RRCAT to act as guide cum supervisor for their visit to the Centre. In the beginning Dr. P.D. Gupta, Head LPD, addressed the students who had assembled in the main auditorium and lecture halls. The students and their accompanying teachers listened with keen interest as Dr. Gupta lucidly described the discovery of Raman effect and the subsequent growth of science in India. He also spoke about the start of the atomic energy programme in India and gave an outline of the history and scientific activities at RRCAT. After the address, the individual school teams started their guided tour of RRCAT. There were more than thirty excellent educative exhibits distributed over ten different buildings. These included models, posters and video shows on the Indus synchrotron radiation sources, live demonstrations of cutting and marking with laser beams, demonstrations of thermodynamics laws with liquid nitrogen, demonstration experiments on magnetism and computer control of dynamic systems. The young students found the lab visits so interesting, that in-spite of the strong sun outside, they kept moving from one building to the next. Adequate arrangements had been made to quench their thirst for knowledge as well as for water, in all the buildings.
After a long and tiring tour of all the exhibits, the visiting students and their teachers were served a sumptuous lunch. To help them remember what they had heard and seen on this day, informative pamphlets were given to the visitors describing RRCAT and its activities. It is certain that the day succeeded in winning at least a few young hearts and minds for the pursuit of basic science.
In the afternoon, family members of employees were given an opportunity to visit the laboratories which are normally out of bound. A large number of employees brought their spouses and children. The staff members manning the exhibits were as enthusiastic in the afternoon as in the morning, in explaining their displayed setup in-spite of the fact that they had already explained their exhibits to 87 school teams in the morning.
