Practical Perseverance

I was trying to assemble an electronic device which suddenly made me learn some mathematics!. I had learnt a formula to find the circumference of the circle in my school, however I never knew what it practically meant

I recently got a bicycle !!!! Yes, I smile whenever I speak about it.

I was wondering what can I gift myself which would be unique and make me feel happy, and then the first thing that came to my mind was buying a bicycle. I had this plan long back in my college days where I would dream about what to do in my first salary , finally it came true. This would be a best gift to me from me which I would remember and preserve, at least its memories for ever.

The electronic device which I was speaking about is my bicycle’s speedometer. This Saturday me and my cousin planned for a cycling trip to Bannerghatta National Park, hence I decided to first assemble the speedometer which I brought a week ago from Decathlon. Assembling this speedometer seemed to be very exciting stuff as I knew nothing about it .

The device had a good amount of documentation with illustrative pictures describing what exactly to be done. It has a magnet, sensor and a digital device which converts rotations per second to kms/hr or Miles/hr. After assembling the hardware on the bicycle, I just saw the next step in the installation guide to set the value of circumference of the wheel in order to make the device calculate the speed accurately. That was exciting I immediately took a tape, found the radius of the wheel and substituted it in (pi)r*r to get the circumference. However, I found another method in the installation guide which is more accurate. First rotate the wheel to make the air nozzle perpendicular to ground and mark that point on ground (Le this be A), then move the bicycle till the nozzle becomes perpendicular to the ground again, that would be a 360 degree rotation of the wheel and mark this point as well (Let this be B) on the ground. Now the distance between A and B is the circumference of the circle .

Ha ha, it was simple and exciting. Finally I understood what circumference exactly meant after about 10 years of learning it in my academics . A question kept popping up in my mind, How many students who successfully clear their exams and make their parents proud, practically know what they study. Being an Engineer, I had least practical knowledge about many things I learnt in my academics; however I could clear these exams with decent scores .

Just learning the formula and substituting values in it is an easy method to get an approximate answer and score well in the exam, but that sucks, there is least excitement in doing that. It’s actually insane and students still do that. The funniest part is, there are many schools which make the students sit and study for their SSLC exams even after the school hours . Learning should be exciting, if you make a student sit and study without letting him play or do things what he likes, he can only score marks and his analysis power would be the least. Scoring good marks is what parents, teachers and society expects in India which is making many real talents sink.

Excitement is a vital part of life which sinks when the pressures around are misunderstood.

Hope a change comes up.

We need a change in the mindsets, not in the methods.

Yours lovingly,
Pram

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