Engineering innovation and fun in equal doses at ?Anokha 2011'

Updated on: Thursday, February 10, 2011

A flurry of activities marked the second day of ‘Anokha 2011', the national technical festival at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham here on Wednesday.

Competitive events went into the final round on Wednesday itself. Some others that saw the participation of many teams will have the final round on Thursday. The efforts that had gone into making models and making them work in the contests were on a par with that of any final examination.

The Department of Chemical Engineering organised “Chemhex”. In this, students exhibited the working models of chemical reactions and models of various chemical plants. ‘Contraption' planned as part of their expo made them come out with a dominoes arrangement using various chemical reactions. They broke into loud applause when all the dominoes gracefully slid to the ground.

Chelsey Fenton, third year chemical engineering student of University of New Mexico, the U.S., who is on a student exchange programme for a semester at the university, was involved in making a model of a cement plant.

She was impressed with the multi-disciplinary approach of the events being held and the way the seniors took charge and guided the juniors in the activities.

Another interesting contest was the one conceived by the Department of Aerospace. ‘MagnusBoat', was an event where students got to design a boat that was propelled by using the Magnus Effect principle. It was interesting to see the 13 teams enthusiastically trying to propel their ‘boats' with the help of air generated from a table fan.

The Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering saw a good response for ‘Rue De Renewable' where students presented papers on various forms of renewable energy.

‘Utilitarian Wars' by the Department of Mechanical Engineering was an event where students were found making working models for the Armed Forces.

The Department of Electronics and Communication organised the ETA XX Mins where students were involved in a search and rescue mission of war heads before the arrival of naxals.

The highlight of the day among the non-contesting events was the Technology Entertainment and Design (TED)x event.

Prashant R. Nair, co-ordinator of the event, said the event was planned to feature talks of representatives from the industry, government, entertainment, academia and entrepreneurship whose experiences would propel a change in the students.

Dabbawala Arvind Gangaram Talekar from Mumbai, Bhavani Bijlani, co-ordinator for the Amala Bharatham campaign of the university for a clean India, and Siddharth Nagarajan, Limca record holder for the youngest drummer in India, were some of the speakers.

Though it is a technical festival, it is not completely technical in its flavour. The evenings are packed with cultural fare for the weary minds that are in a competitive mood the whole day.

While the evening of Tuesday saw a performance of ‘Sinkaari Melam' by a group from Kerala, Wednesday evening was an in-house affair with students from various campuses of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham performing.

Naatya Sudha and Raaga Sudha clubs, and music bands from the Ettimadai and Bangalore campuses gave music and dance shows. There was also a laser show to entertain the students.

The Hindu is the media partner for the event.

Engineering innovation and fun in equal doses at ?Anokha 2011'

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