When academics becomes creative

The students of Jain College, J C Road, recently put together this year’s edition of their fest Trigun — a fest that aims at combining their academic content with a streak of creativity. It’s one of the most-awaited events on campus and the students enthusiastically spent time putting together the material for their stalls.

Each department had put up a series of stalls, with interesting models and charts. The college auditorium — where the stalls were put up — was abuzz with energy, as students milled around, inspecting everything on display.

The department of arts had put up an interesting stall with various recreations, all based on their syllabus. There was an interesting model of a Mughal place of worship, a recreation of the Harappan civilisation’s Great Bath and a depiction of the Twin Towers, along with some snippets on terrorism. There was also an intricate model of the Taj Mahal.

Aditi, who was part of the team of students to put together the entire display, explains that each model took a day or more to complete. “All the matter is relevant to our course material. We were told to come up with themes from our text, and spent some time developing these ideas.”

The department of maths had put together a stall which displayed charts on probability and functions, as well as a model which recreated the line of sight. In the department of physics, an interesting model showcased the conversation of gravitational potential energy into various forms of energy — in the form of water flowing over a turbine-like apparatus.

There was also an intriguing model of a solar boat. Sushmita and Charvy, math students, had put together a display which included a parabola, with lines drawn to indicate its tangents, focal points and directrix. Students could flick a carom coin across the parabola to see how it followed the exact same track on the other side. Some of the students had also created a turbo jet engine, which ended up winning the title of best exhibit.

Gautam, who helped organise the fest, explains, “The idea behind this is to mix academics and creativity. We started planning this right after the Deepavali holidays. We are also conducting ‘JAM’ and dumb charades, in which school students can participate as well — but all the stalls have been put up by students of this college.”