  In India, as in many countries, the main focus in science classrooms is on
exams rather than musing on the fascinating concepts and understanding of the
world that science offers. This can mean that students lose interest in
studying science -a problem that is further hampered where there is a lack of
facilities, expertise or mentors. We started the 'Science is fun' outreach
programme to address these problems. The 15-person team, led by undergraduate
and research scientists, conducted four workshops with underprivileged children
in Indian primary and secondary schools during December 2014 and January 2015.
The workshops explored basic science concepts, reinforced by hands-on
experiments using readily available materials. They were generally successful,
with students keen to participate and motivated to learn more after the
workshops. We were also pleasantly surprised to see students engaging with new
concepts and not hesitating to participate in the discussions. We tried to
ensure teachers were central to the activities, and also designed the
experiments to be easily repeatable so that teachers could incorporate them
into their own lessons once the workshops were over. In this article, we
describe three of our successful activities: building a periscope and a digital
microscope, and two experiments based on the physical gas laws. All are cheap
and easy to perform, yet reveal interesting scientific principles. Each
activity takes about an hour.
