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To celebrate this great scientist birthday, Gujarat Science City, working under the aegis of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of Gujarat is organizing a special programme on 22nd September 2010 (Wednesday) on the theme of “Michael Faraday, our brightest spark”.
GSC has initiating the celebration of such great scientists birth anniversaries to educate the students not only in the key ideas of the scientific field but also on the people who brought these great ideas and discoveries into the world. The celebration aims to regards and respects to this great scientists as well as to encourage new generation to follow their examples of courage, determination, honesty and willingness to great work.
The programme includes a seminar on the theme, interactive session, screening of films and presentations and guided tour to the theme pavilions in Science City.
Eminent Scientist Prof. Sudhir K. Jain, Director, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar and Dr. Deepti S. Tripathi, Professor in Physics, Gujarat University will graces the celebration as Chief Guest and Guest Faculty and to conduct interactive sessions during the seminar to be held from 2.00 pm to 4.00 pm in Auditorium I
Without Michael Faraday our world would be a very different and possibly darker place. Every time you flick on a lamp, fire up your laptop or switch on the kettle, it’s him you have to thank for turning the electricity that powers them from a party-trick curiosity into a world-driving technology.
But this son of an ironsmith might never have made his discoveries in electromagnetics or invented the electric motor had it not been for the Royal Institution (RI) of Great Britain.
When the young Faraday first attended a public lecture by the eminent chemist and inventor Sir Humphry Davy, he was apprenticed to a bookbinder. Faraday’s fertile imagination was fired and he wrote to Davy, who was impressed enough by the young man’s fervour to invite him to act as his assistant.
As the years passed, Faraday established a name for himself among his fellow scientists and the students at the Royal Institution, creating a lecture series tradition that continues today. All this time, he continued his research into electromagnetism and in 1831, he determined the rules that governed electromagnetic induction.
From these humble beginnings, Faraday rose to become one of history’s most celebrated scientific figures. Faraday continued to work there for the rest of his life. His passion, “teaching, by courses of philosophical lectures and experiments, the application of science to the common purposes of life”, still resonates in the halls of the fabulous building on Albermarle Street.
Electromagnetic induction is the science behind the electric generator and the electric transformer. It meant that electricity could go from a novelty item of the rich to the power behind mass production, industrialization and modern manufacturing and transportation. Faraday changed the world by expanding the scientific knowledge of his era and giving it a truly practical application.
Faraday’s work and discoveries earned him many titles and honors throughout his scientific career. An unfortunate bout of ill health but a stop to further research and in late August of 1867, Faraday died. Without him, the words “electrode”, “ion” and “cathode” may never have existed and the fundamental principles behind the electric motor never thoroughly worked out.
Every school student learns that moving a magnet inside a coil of wire produces an electrical current. That was Faraday’s original experiment and took a man of humble beginnings into the books of modern world history. Michael Faraday not only discovered the role of electromagnetism but also the compound benzene reminding everyone who knew him that he was not just a physicist but a chemist, but the founder of basic sciences in the earlier times.
School and college students, science educators and communicators, and other interested members are requested to attend the programme and to explore more on this legendary scientist whose work showed the way for future curious characters in physics.
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