Higher secondary students will now be able to undertake physics experiments in digital form, courtesy the Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE).
KITE will make available a free and open source software (FOSS) and hardware ‘ExpEYES’ (Experiments for Young Engineers and Scientists) that can be connected to laptops. This facility for physics studies is in addition to the Maths IT labs that will be introduced this year.
At present, 36 practical activities have been stipulated for higher secondary students.
In addition to lab experiments, students can easily undertake electronics, electrical, mechanical, thermal, and sound experiments through ExpEYES, a recent statement from KITE said.
ExpEYES is a four-channel oscilloscope that has square, sine, and triangular wave generators.
Experiments such as creation of AC/DC signals, sonometer, resonance column single pendulum, helical spring and so on can be easily and precisely undertaken through ExpEYES. It will also facilitate detailed analysis of data obtained from experiments done in labs.
Equipment such as oscilloscope may not be available in schools.
Not only does ExpEYES fill the gap, it also enables over 150 physics experiments. A teacher can thus give a live demonstration in classrooms while teaching the theory and students can try out the experiments in labs.
Organisations such as ICFOSS, Inter University Accelerator Centre (IUAC), and the free software community are partnering with KITE on the project. In 2017, a group of 20 teachers were given training by the IUAC in New Delhi.
Training
Now, training for over 2,700 physics teachers in higher secondary is being conducted.
“As part of the ongoing IT vacation training for higher secondary school teachers, ExpEYES kits for all physics teachers have been made available,” K. Anvar Sadath, vice chairman, KITE, said. All schools too will be equipped with ExpEYES kits.
The use of open source software in ExpEYES enables modifications in the source code for new experiments that would be added to the list.
The recently rolled out IT@School GNU/ Linux 18.04 operating system by KITE has incorporated the ExpEYES applications.
150 experiments
Over 150 experiments at the higher secondary level on topics such as motion, thermal properties, oscillation, waves, electric potential, capacitance, current electricity, magnetism, electronic magnetic induction, AC, and semiconductors have been made ready.
In addition to these, ExpEYES will facilitate experiments for high school classes such as Ohm’s law, resonance, analog and digital, half-wave, full-wave rectification and so on.
