The Agastya’s Campus Creativity Lab at Kuppam is designed to provide children with the best learning environment and equipment. It strives to truly invoke children’s curiosity and enable them to learn by themselves instead of hand-feeding information that students learn by rote for the sole purpose of school.
This series of articles aims to provide a glimpse of the different labs and spaces on the campus and how they aid the process of “Aah! Aha! Ha-Ha!,” the Agastya Way of Learning. What does this stand for? The Aah indicates the curiosity one has about phenomena around them. The Aha is for when one conducts experiments and arrives at an explanation for their curiosity. The Ha-Ha stands for the joy and confidence gained during this process of learning.
The Gurugraha Astronomy Centre brings the vast sky and universe to visiting students and teachers from rural areas. While astronomy may seem far removed from their lives, it provides a solid introduction to many mathematical and scientific concepts in an exciting manner. Moreover, learning about the universe helps us know more about the planet we live on and the story behind where we came from.
Shaped like a dome, the Gurugraha Astronomy Centre houses a model of our solar system. The planets orbit the sun as they do in the solar system, and each of their specifications and traits are depicted.
The unique thing about this model is that it has been constructed as part of the building structure, with the sun being a bright white light at the centre and the planets’ orbits constructed as rings around it, descending towards the floor. The planets themselves are made so as to be moving along their orbit, showing the distance and time between each planet. Visitors can also walk upstairs to take a closer look at the planets and their motions.
Each planet also has a dedicated table that lists all its information — its days, how many moons it has, how many years it takes to complete a round around the sun, and other trivia surrounding it.
There is also a planetarium on the domed top of the astronomy centre, invoking the universe’s wonders to awe and interest children. It is a surefire way to get children interested in the mysteries of the universe and learn fundamental maths and physics concepts along the way.
As the course outline for an astronomy course at Virginia University explains, “By studying the cosmos beyond our own planet, we can understand where we came from, where we are going, and how physics works under conditions which are impossible to recreate on Earth. In astronomy, the Universe is our laboratory!” Agastya’s Gurugraha Astronomy Centre is dedicated to replicating this lab on Earth and helping children physically experiment in it.
