National Science Day 2021

• 01 Mar 2021

Why in News

National Science Day (NSD) is celebrated every year on 28th February to commemorate the discovery of the ‘Raman Effect’ by Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930. The first NSD was celebrated in1987.

Key Points

• Basic Objective: To propagate the message of the importance of science and its application among the people.
• 2021 Theme: ‘Future of STI (Science, Technology and Innovations): Impacts on Education, Skills, and Work’.
• Nodal Agency to Support Celebration: National Council for Science & Technology Communication (NCSTC) of Ministry of Science and Technology.
• Awards Conferred:
  
  • National S&T Communication Awards, Augmenting Writing Skills for Articulating Research (AWSAR) awards, and SERB Women Excellence Awards and Rajendra Prabhu Memorial Appreciation Shield for outstanding work in science media and journalism.
  • The first-ever National S&T Databases on S&T Awards in India and Indian origin Academicians abroad, was released.
• Augmenting Writing Skills for Articulating Research (AWSAR):
  
  • AWSAR is an initiative that aims to disseminate Indian research stories among the masses in an easy to understand and interesting format.
  • Objectives:
    
    • To encourage youth pursuing higher studies to submit at least one story/article based on their research work.
    • Foster, strengthen and create scientific temper through popular science writing and creating a culture of science communication/popularisation among the scholars.
    • Recognize the initiative and output of researchers on the specific aspects of natural, physical, mathematical and information sciences, applied science, technology, engineering, and multi-disciplinary science.
    • Conduct training Workshops for Early Career Researchers (PhD Scholars and PDFs) in popular science writing.
• Some Recent Developments:
  
  • National Research Foundation (NRF): It is to be set-up as an autonomous body envisaged under the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
    
    • It will look after funding, mentoring, and building ‘quality of research’ in India. The NRF aims to fund researchers working across streams in India.
  • Draft National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP 2020).

Raman Effect

• Raman is the inelastic scattering of a photon by molecules which are excited to higher vibrational or rotational energy levels. It is also called Raman scattering.
  
  • In simpler words, it is a change in the wavelength of light that occurs when a light beam is deflected by molecules.
  • When a beam of light traverses a dust-free, transparent sample of a chemical compound, a small fraction of the light emerges in directions other than that of the incident (incoming) beam.
  • Most of this scattered light is of unchanged wavelength. A small part, however, has wavelengths different from that of the incident light and its presence is a result of the Raman Effect.
• The Raman effect forms the basis for Raman spectroscopy which is used by chemists and physicists to gain information about materials.
  
  • Spectroscopy is the study of the interaction between matter and electromagnetic radiation.

Source:IE