Gandhinagar: With Diwali just around the corner, markets are flooded with all kinds of readymade decorative lamps. But have you ever thought that you could make unique eco-friendly lamps and also learn the Mathematical concepts from them? This has been made possible by the Centre for Creative Learning (CCL) at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN), which has come up with yet another distinctive online series called – ‘Cubical Diwali Lamps – Cube ke 20 Avatar’. The YouTube series combines art and Maths in an interesting way to teach 20 kinds of DIY paper lamps, which are made out of a Cube. As a part of this video series, which was launched on the day of Dussehra and would continue for 20 days up to Diwali, every day the CCL team releases a new video on its YouTube channel on how to make a new paper lamp that and also discusses interesting Maths behind each lamp’s shape.
These eco-friendly DIY lamps require very minimal material like chart paper and glue/stapler. Each YouTube video contains a design template and procedure of making the paper lamp described by the CCL team, which makes it a very easy and hands-on family activity during the festive times. Besides teaching the Mathematical concept, these paper lamps look extremely beautiful. Sharing the idea behind this initiative, Prof Manish Jain, Head of CCL and AssociateTeaching Professor, IITGN, said, “One of the ideas behind this series is to give an experiential flavour to 3D objects so that our way of looking at day-to-day things becomes scientific and mathematical. For instance, the football that we play with is a truncated icosahedron or a 20 triangle 3D structure whose 12 poky points are all chopped off. So, the next time you see the most popular akash kandil, you should see a cuboctahedron in it, which is the structure you get by cutting the points of a cube.
And it is the only structure that exists whose radius and side are equal.” “It’s so much fun to bring this beautiful art combined with Maths in front of the audience. CCL always tries to nurture creativity and innovative learning among children and STEM enthusiasts through such initiatives”, said Dr Sarita, who, along with Mr Pankaj Godara and Mr Satish from the CCL team, is primarily involved in making this series. CCL-IITGN is also running 30-30 Eklavya, a popular online interactive education programme to decode effective implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) across the schools in collaboration with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). The weekly series, live-streamed every Sunday from 4 to 5 pm on CCL’s YouTube channel, aims to nurture creativity, out-of-box thinking, conceptual understanding, interdisciplinary education, problem-solving skills, and Learning How to Learn among school students.