National Science Day is celebrated every year on February 28. The theme for National Science Day 2017 is ‘Science and Technology for Specially-Abled Persons’ to improve the lives of the differently-abled better with the use of science and technology.
What is National Science Day?
The first National Science Day was celebrated on February 28, 1987 in honor of C V Raman, who discovered the Raman Effect — for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930. It was the first time that an Indian won the prize, even the first Asian. The phenomenon which deals with how photons, or quantum measures of light, scatter when they are excited to a higher level— and its derivations and modifications are used to analyze solids, liquids, and gasses as well as their components.
Together in 1986, National Council of Science Museums (NCSM) and National Council for Science and Technology Communication (NCSTC) asked the government of India to designate February 28 as National Science Day.
What is the theme this year?
‘Science and Technology for Specially-Abled Persons’ is the theme this year, in order to encourage innovation, awareness and reach of accessibility solutions worldwide to over one billion differently-abled people in the world. As per records, 50 per cent of India’s 100 million differently-abled persons are under the age of 30 and there is a huge need for assistive technology products. The government plans to bring together government, corporates, educators, NGOs and to understand the needs of differently-abled people and provide information on available solutions that can provide inclusive growth to all differently-abled people.
Who is C V Raman?
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born in Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu in the year 1888 and he went on to join the Indian Civil Service at a very young age even though his interests laid in science, in the field of sound and light. He researched in those areas at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science and his work was published in popular journals. In 1917, he was offered professorship of physics at Calcutta University and he was back to his first love – science. Raman then began a systematic study of scattering of light by different substances that eventually led to the discovery of what came to be called the Raman Effect.
What is the Raman Effect?
The Raman Effect observes changes in wavelength after the scattering of light, which passes through a medium. When a light beam travels through a medium, the beam is deflected by the molecules. He discovered that a small part of the emerging light beam after deflection by the molecules had a different wavelength from the original beam. Therefore, the wavelength of light after passing through a medium and being deflected by the molecules had a different wavelength. This change in wavelength of the light beam is known as the Raman Effect and is an important part of spectroscopy.