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A VERY INTERESTING CONVERSATION
Received by email
An Atheist Professor of Philosophy was speaking to his Class on the Problem Science has
with GOD, the ALMIGHTY. He asked one of his New Christian Students to stand and . . .

Professor : You are Christian, aren't you, son ?
Student : Yes, sir.
Professor : So, you Believe in GOD ?
Student : Absolutely, sir.
Professor : Is GOD Good ?
Student : Sure.
Professor : Is GOD ALL - POWERFUL ?
Student : Yes.
Professor : My Brother died of Cancer even though he Prayed to GOD to Heal him.

(Collected from Previous Board Question Papers and CBSE Sample Papers and Guess Papers made by experienced teachers)

1. Where does centre of curvature of a spherical mirror lie?
2. Name two important properties of a magnet.
3. How is 1 ohm related to ampere and volt?
4. Draw neat ray diagrams to illustrate the formation of images due to a beam of light incident parallel to the principal axis of a (i) concave mirror, (ii) convex mirror in each case.
5. Why is a series arrangement not used for connecting domestic electrical appliances in a circuit?
   

This blog is being updated. Please come back soon to see the updated version
Aim: To determine i) The volume of the given cylinder by measuring its length and diameter
Apparatus : Vernier Calipers,Cylinder

Visit the following links. These are some of the excellent tools which I believe will be of great use to Teachers of today and tomorrow.

1. http://www.wpclipart.com/index.html
2. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
3. http://scratch.mit.edu/channel/featured
4. http://teachertube.com/
5. http://edu.glogster.com/
6. http://www.pencil-animation.org/
7. http://hotpot.uvic.ca/

After making the Class-X board examination optional from next year, the CBSE has decided to set questions for Class-IX test, presently being conducted by affiliated schools, to bring uniformity in the system and
ensure better assessment of students. To have standardisation in examination system, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has designed the question papers for examination in Class-IX.

CBSE has published copies of Answer sheets of High scoring students in all subjects in class X as well as XII .

Click Here to go to the Download Page

The Answer sheet as well as question papers can be downloaded here.

The first phase of CBSE counseling has begun from today the 1st of Feb. and will continue upto 8th April, 2010.

This is the 13th consecutive year that CBSE will be providing counseling services to students and parents during examinations to overcome anxiety and examination related stress.

Natural X-rays from across the space are of very high energy but luckily our atmosphere shields us. This means X-ray telescopes must be above the atmosphere to see distant objects emitting X-rays.

More than 100,000 X-ray sources have been detected across the Universe. The most distant object seen in X-rays is 13 billion lightyears from Earth

Download and try to answer these questions

http://www.zietmysore.org/stud_mats/XII/PHYSICS/em%20wave-hots.pdf

Akhil Mathew, an 18-year-old resident of Madison, New Jersey, Tuesday night won the third place in the Intel Science Talent Search, America's oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition honouring the next generation of American innovators.

The Intel Foundation that gives the annual Intel Science Talent Search award and is administered by the Society for Science and the Public declared Akhil the third place winner with a $50,000 cash award for his math project on Deligne categories, a setting for studying a wide range of algebraic structures with ties to theoretical physics. The honour was announced during a gala dinner in Washington DC.

'These 40 Intel Science Talent Search finalists demonstrate that we have the capability in this country to cultivate the next generation of innovators, scientists and entrepreneurs,' said Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini.

'These young scientists are proof that curious, eager minds coupled with inspiring, knowledgeable teachers are the foundation for world-changing innovation,' he said referring to the 40 finalists, five of whom were Indian Americans.

Erika DeBenedictis, 18, of Albuquerque, NM, won the top award of $100,000 from the Intel Foundation for her project developing a software navigation system to help improve spacecraft travel through the solar system.

Second place honours and $75,000 went to David Liu, 18, of Saratoga, California, for his work to develop a system to recognise and understand digital images. David's work has already been used to examine aerial images to identify hazards to buried oil pipelines and could also be used to enable unmanned aerial vehicles and web-based image searches.

For Akhil, his life's ambition is to promote the sciences and mathematics.
Read more at this Link

Akhil Mathew, an 18-year-old resident of Madison, New Jersey, Tuesday night won the third place in the Intel Science Talent Search, America's oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition honouring the next generation of American innovators.

The Intel Foundation that gives the annual Intel Science Talent Search award and is administered by the Society for Science and the Public declared Akhil the third place winner with a $50,000 cash award for his math project on Deligne categories, a setting for studying a wide range of algebraic structures with ties to theoretical physics. The honour was announced during a gala dinner in Washington DC.

'These 40 Intel Science Talent Search finalists demonstrate that we have the capability in this country to cultivate the next generation of innovators, scientists and entrepreneurs,' said Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini.

'These young scientists are proof that curious, eager minds coupled with inspiring, knowledgeable teachers are the foundation for world-changing innovation,' he said referring to the 40 finalists, five of whom were Indian Americans.

Erika DeBenedictis, 18, of Albuquerque, NM, won the top award of $100,000 from the Intel Foundation for her project developing a software navigation system to help improve spacecraft travel through the solar system.

Second place honours and $75,000 went to David Liu, 18, of Saratoga, California, for his work to develop a system to recognise and understand digital images. David's work has already been used to examine aerial images to identify hazards to buried oil pipelines and could also be used to enable unmanned aerial vehicles and web-based image searches.

For Akhil, his life's ambition is to promote the sciences and mathematics.
Read more at this Link

The union public service commission (UPSC) updates its examination system from time to time to keep it in sync with the changing environment. From next year, the aspirants of civil services are going to have a different exam pattern. Under Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT), the candidates will have to appear in the two objective type papers having special emphasis on testing their “aptitude for the civil services” as well as on “ethical and moral dimension of decision-making”. An equal weightage would be given to both these papers and they will be common to all candidates in place of one common paper (general awareness) and one optional paper (any particular subject of choice).

Columbia University has announced the opening of Columbia Global Center for South Asia in Mumbai. The economist and Director of South Asian Programs for Columbia’s Earth Institute, Mr. Nirupam Bajpai, will be leading efforts to open the Center. Columbia’s global scholarship is already established in Beijing (China), Paris (France) and Amman (Jordan) and now Mumbai is going to be its fourth hub. According to Mr. Bajpai, “Being physically present makes outreach and involvement with local institutions easier while still maintaining a close relationship with Columbia.”

This placement season, XLRI Jamshedpur has recorded a 10 per cent rise in the highest international offer to its students. The offer, about Rs 60 lakh a year, is from Novartis. The student, who received this offer, is going be based in Switzerland in the human resource department of the company.

PUNE: Starting this year, the University of Pune (UoP) will introduce an online examination for two theory papers at the first-year engineering degree level course. “The papers relate to basic electronics engineering and engineering mechanics, which are common to all engineering batches in the first-year studies,” UoP’s dean of engineering faculty Prakash Wani told TOI.

While the papers are scheduled for April/May as part of the second semester exam for academic year 2009-10, the online exam initiative comes as an extension of the pilot project which the UoP had undertaken three semesters back to introduce online evaluation and assessment process in engineering studies.

The university then conducted the online examination for the 50 marks paper relating to ‘Fundamentals of programming languages (FPL)’ — a practical-cum-oral subject that was introduced post-revision of the first-year engineering syllabus in 2007, with a view to equip students with better programme development know-how instead of becoming mere ‘coding masters’, said Wani.

“The idea was to curb the tendency of extending common marks to FPL, which would give us no judgement as to what the student had learnt,” he said. The pilot paper involved multiple choice questions solved online, he added.

Growing in confidence from this experiment involving between 20,000 to 25,000 students who took each of the last three semester exams for FPL, the engineering faculty has now decided to venture into the theory papers, he said.

A strong advocate of the online examination process, Wani said, “Going for such technology-based option is imperative if universities are to stand up to the competition vis-a-vis foreign varsities that are to soon enter into Indian higher education sector and the innovative evaluation and assessment mechanisms and tools they are expected to bring.” Already, there are a slew of competitive exams like the GRE and the IIM CAT, which are conducted online, he said.

The growth in the number of engineering colleges under the UoP, from a little over 30 three years ago to 70, and the resultant growth in volumes for paper evaluation and assessment, besides lack of adequate qualified manpower for such processes, prompted the UoP engineering faculty to explore online examination, said Wani. “The idea was also to have transparent, credible and independent assessment system,” he added.

The engineering faculty involves 40 theory papers and 15 practical-cum-oral papers for various subjects from the first- to the final-year, he said. “Even if 10 of the 40 theory papers are transferred to online examination mode, we will end up reducing the assessment burden by 1/4th,” said Wani.

He pointed out that each engineering student appears for five subjects and there are around 50,000 students sitting for examinations each year.

The multiplying effect results in huge volumes for assessment, which is a repetitive work and can be taken care of by computer-based systems, said Wani.

The online exam for the two theory papers would involve setting of papers, students giving the exam online and evaluation processes, he said, adding, a 50-mark section from each of the two papers of total 100 marks, will be conducted online.

The UoP has made budgetary provision of Rs 10 lakh for these online examinations and a seven-member core committee from the engineering faculty is monitoring the initiative.

At the end of the Physics exam paper of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Class 12 on Wednesday, the students reacted differently. For some it was difficult and for some others it was OK but lengthy. Students said no out-of-syllabus questions appeared and neither were there any mistakes in the question paper. "It was tough. The questions were more application-based and there were few direct questions. Last year's was easier" said a student.

The tough section was solving problems based on concepts, for which they had to try various methods before arriving at an answer.

What is your opinion? Express your opinion as comments below
Intense Debate

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) exam for Class X and Class XII started. Around 6.99 lakh candidates took their Class XII examination for physics on 3 March 2010.
There will be 13,311 students appearing for the Class X and 8,596 candidates appearing for the Class XII examinations in 56 and 45 centres abroad respectively. The number of centres for Class X and Class XII in Gulf countries were 37 and 33 respectively.

More than 6.99 lakh candidates will also take their class XII examination and about 9.25 lakh candidates will be appearing in CBSE class X examination.

NASA Quest
http://quest.nasa.gov/
NASA Quest Challenges are FREE Web-based, interactive explorations designed to engage students in authentic scientific and engineering processes. The solutions relate to issues encountered daily by NASA personnel.
Read more here http://quest.nasa.gov/challenges/