New Delhi   

Schoolchildren track down time

P. Anima

NEW DELHI: It was an occasion when a group of enthusiastic schoolchildren decided to track down time -- quite literally. As part of Project Khoj initiated by the Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE), schoolchildren and teachers from various schools of Delhi along with astronomers tracked down the exact physical location of 82.5 degree East longitude from which Indian Standard Time (IST) is calculated.

India did not have an observatory at the 82.5 degrees East longitude point, which lies west of Mirzapur near Allahabad. The students conducted various experiments at the location this past week and put an insignia there to highlight the significance of the point.

The small observatory set up by the group of schoolchildren can be seen on the Mirzapur-Allahabad highway.

The project group at Mirzapur conducted experiments to find the local noon to verify the IST, while a simultaneous experiment was carried out by a group of schoolchildren in Delhi that verified the time difference between the two places to be 21 minutes.

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