New week, new beginning...

                        

                             After a wonderful weekend each of us spent in our own ways, we arrived at Lise Meitner with great enthusiasm for the new week.  One week has already come to an end!  The beginning of the new week saw the Lise Meitner students interacting with the eleventh graders before the other schools arrived.  The students had the very expected questions on sports and about our poverty while they also brought up an unexpected question about the rift between India and Pakistan.  It´s sad to see that Slumdog Millionaire inspires their picture of India.  I hope our talk could bring out the real truth about the real India.
                         The project work started off once everyone arrived, giving us a chance to sit together and lay out solid plans for our ideas and presentation.  The Indians in the meanwhile stole a few moments for themselves to rehearse for the parents´ evening which will take place on tuesday, 15th of May.
                         Soon it was time for us to leave for our last field trip to Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M).  This institute researches about ways to reduce the effects of climate change using models of the earth that have similar conditions as the real planet.  They gave us a clear picture of how the Earth´s temperature will rise due to global warming.  An interesting theory that came up was how due to deforestation the dark, heat absorbing regions of the earth are removed and how due to afforestation, dark regions are established, hence creating more heat.  At the same time we know that deforestation reduces transpiration, hence increasing the heat and afforestaton increases transpiration, thus cooling the atmosphere.
                         After this interesting presentation we had a talk on how super computers will help improvise on the technology of the Earth models, on which research is carried out, by Mr. Mathis from the German Climate computing Centre (DKRZ).  After which we had a short trip around the research centre.
                          So the day came to an end with a few of us moving to the Alster for dinner while the rest of us proceeded back home and enjoyed a wonderful home cooked meal.  We eagerly look forward to the parents´ evening where we can show the Germans what India really is.


Niharika Kabra :)