Kaapi with Kuriosity


Kaapi with Kuriosity is a monthly public lecture series organised by the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR), in collaboration with the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium and other educational institutions in Bengaluru.

The aim of the talks in this series is to stimulate the curiosity of the public towards the myriad aspects of science. The setting for these talks will be informal with a lot of scope for open discussions. The scientific background assumed will not be beyond the school level. As such, they are easily accessible to school/college students, families and working professionals interested in science.

Contact: outreach @ icts . res . in

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Past Talks
Science, the fulcrum for social and economic change
K. VijayRaghavan (Principal Scientific Adviser to the Govt. Of India)
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm Sunday, 14 October 2018
J. N. Planetarium, Sri T. Chowdaiah Road, High Grounds, Bangalore
Science is not only beautiful but is also the fulcrum on which the strong crowbar of national missions, security, and our very future can rest, allowing modest investment to lift huge loads. This fulcrum must be strong and correctly placed. Today, it is poorly positioned and not strong enough...more
A finite discussion on the Infinite
Tanvi Jain (Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi)
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm Sunday, 09 September 2018
J. N. Planetarium, Sri T. Chowdaiah Road, High Grounds, Bangalore
“From time immemorial, the infinite has stirred men's emotions more than any other question. Hardly any other idea has stimulated the mind so fruitfully. Yet, no other concept needs clarification more than it does.” - David Hilbert We shall try to understand the intriguing concept of the infinite...more
Making Things, Doing Science
Arvind Gupta (Children’s Science Center, IUCAA - former)
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm Sunday, 19 August 2018
J. N. Planetarium, Sri T. Chowdaiah Road, High Grounds, Bangalore
Before children can understand anything, they need experience: seeing, touching, hearing, tasting, smelling, choosing, arranging, putting things together, taking things apart. Children need to experiment with real things available in their milieu. For close to 40 years Arvind Gupta has designed...more
The Discrete Charm of Geometry
Alexander Bobenko (Technical University of Berlin)
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm Sunday, 22 July 2018
J. N. Planetarium, Sri T. Chowdaiah Road, High Grounds, Bangalore
Discrete geometric structures (points, lines, triangles, rectangles, polygons, etc.) are ubiquitous in everyday life, ranging from visible sophisticated freeform structures in contemporary architecture to hidden geometric algorithms in computer generated imagery. On the other hand, discrete...more
How quantum physics democratised music: a meditation on physics and technology
Michael Berry (University of Bristol, UK)
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm Sunday, 10 June 2018
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bengaluru
Connections between physics and technological invention and aspects of human life that seem far from science are both unexpected and unexpectedly common. And rather than flowing one way - from physics to gadgets - the connections form an intricate web, linking all aspects of human culture, in...more
Black Holes and Steam Engines
Joseph Samuel (Raman Research Institute, Bangalore)
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm Sunday, 27 May 2018
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bengaluru
This talk will describe the ways in which the idea of a black hole has affected the conceptual foundations of theoretical physics. The talk will be pitched at an elementary level and is addressed mainly to members of the general public and school students. No equations will be used, except for the...more
Towards Life in a Jar
Zorana Zeravcic (ESPCI Paris, France)
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm Sunday, 22 April 2018
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bengaluru
Living organisms have amazing capabilities: they move and react, eat and digest, reproduce and heal, sense and communicate, and also evolve. All of these characteristics emerge from interactions within a rather small set of molecular building blocks such as water and sugars. In this talk we will...more
Endless forms most beautiful
Shannon Olsson (National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), TIFR)
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm Sunday, 25 March 2018
J. N. Planetarium, Sri T. Chowdaiah Road, High Grounds, Bangalore
One of the most fundamental questions in our pursuit to understand our living world is how new species come to be, creating the vast biodiversity that exists on our planet. Here, I will tell the story of how scientists across continents and disciplines have tracked this question over 150 years for...more
Fascinating world of photons, superposition and entanglement
Urbasi Sinha (Quantum Information and Computing (QuIC) laboratory at Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru)
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm Sunday, 25 February 2018
J. N. Planetarium, Sri T. Chowdaiah Road, High Grounds, Bangalore
Quantum mechanics is a cornerstone of modern physics. Just as the 19th century was called the Machine Age and the 20th century the Information Age, the 21st century promises to go down in history as the Quantum Age. In this talk, I will discuss key properties of quantum systems called Quantum...more
Black Holes
Ramesh Narayan (Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University and Senior Astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm Sunday, 21 January 2018
J. N. Planetarium, Sri T. Chowdaiah Road, High Grounds, Bangalore
A black hole is an object which is so compact, and whose gravitational pull is so strong, that nothing -- not even light – can escape from its interior. The concept of a black hole is very bizarre and one feels that something in physics ought to prevent the formation of such objects. But this is...more

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