Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Home-made Bio-Ltmus Paper- His first invention

He was continuously raising his small hands. I was just entering our township.My reflexes acted sharply and the car came to screeching halt. It was my son Rony, who just opened the door of the car( it is never locked) and sat beside me. He had a packet with him.

“ Sorry Baba, but that is the only way to stop your car.’

While driving, my eyes can spot only the tyres of cycles and automobiles and only limbs (not the faces) of moving live objects. That is the only way to concentrate for an absentminded person like me allowing the mind to remain in restricted fields only.

We finished exchanges and I said “what made you to come here, I am returning now. We could have...”

“Baba, I want to get this done right now. Mummy is out on Ladies club meeting. This is the only time”

He took out a the small Rail engine “This is now moving slowly”

“Oh! These Chinese made toys are not supposed to last long. Next week I shall get you a better one. This time it shall be Japanese made”

He took out a rectifier from his pocket “This fire may improve this engine”

“ How do you know?”

“ Yesterday the maintenance people changed a thing like this for our slow moving fan. Now that fan is moving very fast, so, why not for this engine?’

“ Where could you get this thing?”

“I asked the mechanic uncle to give another such thing.”

“So what we do now?”

“Simple. Just let us go to market and give this to that Raduio repairing shop. He shall replace this with this one, …fire or something you said’

Only day before yesterday I gave this toy to him and thank god, it is intact until now. With any working toy, he was more interested in opening it, to see how it functioned rather than playing with it. He already knew that all these toys, there was a motor and from yesterday he knew not the motors moved speedily with the help of the rectifier.

The mechanic boy installed the rectifier and tested the speed. The engine now shot like a released Arrow from a Bow. Then, he was a six years kid.

The right time for him to make experiments was the siesta hours of his mother. He would take his toys, audio cassettes and his kite making kits to upstairs to begin his operations. He would either make new kite of various shapes or open up the toys and cassettes to see what made these objects work.

One afternoon when I returned my residence, I found my daughter Junia and wife was watching something made by him.

As I came near, my wife said “ Look at these blotting papers. We don’t have to buy Litmus papers for the chemical Lab assignments.

Junia was a student of Class 8Th standard and they were supposed to buy litmus papers on their own for their Science lab experiment.

Seeing those blotting papers I said “ Only yesterday I saw a couple of this papers on the roof top”

My wife was complaining that She was finding only few Jaba (hibiscus) flowers, not enough for her daily “Puja” I went to see whether the flower plants require a replacement or there is some disease. I found none.

Junia said “ He rubbed the fresh Jaba flowers on these blotting papers and dried on sun. The red color disappeared possibly due to bleaching or something else. But see it works”

She brought two small glasses, one contained foaming “Surf” solution and another with fresh Limejuice. She dipped the blotting papers on both of them. The paper dipped in Limejuice became red instantly and in “surf” solutions, it became blue. Diluting the contents on both of them and dipping blotting papers on them produced the same results.

Junia said “ Baba, Citric acid is weak and when we diluted it to great extent it becomes more weak. Even then, these Litmus papers are sensitive enough to detect the presence of a weak acid and the other a weak base. I think these papers should work for all acids and bases strong or weak. Tomorrow I shall test it in our lab.”

His mother said proudly “This is his first invention and after all he is my son.” On such occasion, it is always her son only. I admitted like every time. This is not the time to debate but time to celebrate.

Next day, the results were successful in the lab and the science teacher congratulated Rony for his attempt. She said that she was not sure whether this is discovery but told them that these flowers contain an organic dye, which the blotting papers soaked. This dye might be sensitive to both acids and alkali resulting change in color. He presented this in the annual exhibition of the school and the title of his product was “ HOME-MADE BIO LITMUS PAPER.

Rony is 24 now, a software engineer with a multinational company. He is involving in developing some kind of new software product. Possibly, like charity, inventive brains develop at Home.

3 comments:

KitchenKarma said...

Thanks for visiting my blog. You account made me smile :-)

Soumen said...

loved the flow in this writeup!

pradipwritenow said...

Thank You both Suchi and Soumen. I am putting up some more blogs for the indiblog contest. Have a look I shall be encouraged.