Now I know Dorothy!

Abstract

"Our message is – dare I say – crystal clear," observed UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova in her opening remarks at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on 20 January 2014. At exactly the same time some 6480.2 miles away in a school at Hyderabad, India echoed a message "Now I know Dorothy" this was an excited exclamation from hundreds of high school children. The occasion was an IYCr2014 outreach programme motivated and supported by the President of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) Professor Gautam R. Desiraju. The occasion was an IYCr2014 outreach programme that matched IYCr2014 goals and objectives. The project next moved to smaller places. To make IYCr2014 relevant specifically to young students in villages and small towns, it was thought that the student audience must be comprised from non-English medium schools. This prompted translating "Crystallography Matters!" from English to a widely spoken (60 million) South Indian language called Telugu. the next step was to prepare power point presentations in Telugu, prepare crystallography related simple multiple choice questions, quiz papers, buy chocolates to represent crystallization process in making chocolates, sugar candy (Kalkand) to show them real crystals so that students connect to the subject with ease. Then travel to schools and start with an introduction to what and why is IYCr, demonstrate uses of crystals with examples, tell them why we cannot use microscope to "see" the inside of crystals, lecture, demo interactive sessions and so on .The presentation involved introducing science behind crystallography, explaining how to grow crystals, relevance to everyday life with references to NaCl and other medical uses. Sessions end with taking questions, ask mass questions like who is Dorothy, poster readings, who is Bragg, valuations of quiz papers and distribution of prizes, chocolates and sugar candy. Finally Crystallography Matters! books are given to the students and copies to school libraries.