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NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 5 & 248Bibha Chowdhuri — Let us explore

Book page 247 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.
In the recent times, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are changing the way students learn. Let us know more about them. • Augmented reality (AR) enhances a person’s environment by adding digital elements to what can be seen in real time, usually through a smartphone camera. • Virtual reality (VR) offers a fully immersive experience, replacing the real world with a simulated one. • Through AR and VR, the students can see and interact with things that they could not interact with in real life. This enables younger students to understand difficult ideas easily. • To keep up with the times, NCERT has developed the e-Pathshala AR (Augmented Reality) App under the aegis of MHRD, Government of India. • This App aims to enable students to go beyond textbooks and four walls of the classrooms and learn concepts by directly experimenting rather than only through reading and memorisation. • This revolutionary effort will change most students from passive listeners to active learners. • This effort is in line with the Prime Minister’s Digital India vision to empower varied sectors using technology and addressing the triple need of skill, scale, and speed. Gear up for the new age education!
Answer

The distinction to be clear about first:

Augmented Reality (AR)Virtual Reality (VR)
What it doesAdds digital things to the real world you can still seeReplaces the real world with a simulated one
EquipmentUsually just a smartphone cameraA headset that covers the eyes
In classPoint a phone at a textbook diagram of the heart and watch it beat on the pagePut on a headset and stand inside the chamber of a heart
StrengthCheap, no special hardware, keeps the classroom and the bookTotal immersion; you can walk through a place you could never reach

Where they genuinely help. Three kinds of subject matter defeat a flat page, and these are exactly what AR and VR are for:

  • Things too small or too large — a cell, a molecule, the solar system.
  • Things too dangerous or too costly — a chemical reaction that would burn, a dissection, a rocket launch. A simulated experiment can be repeated fifty times at no cost and with no risk.
  • Things too distant in space or time — the surface of Mars, the inside of the Sun, a Harappan street.

NCERT's own effort is the e-Pathshala AR app, which links printed NCERT textbooks to three-dimensional models and interactive content, so that a student “can go beyond textbooks and four walls of the classrooms”. Its stated aim is the one that matters — turning “passive listeners” into “active learners”.

Keep a critical eye, though — this is a science chapter. The passage is written in a promotional register (“revolutionary”, “Gear up for the new age education!”). Three fair questions to raise in class: (i) Does AR actually improve understanding, or only engagement? Research so far suggests it helps with spatial subjects and much less with abstract ones. (ii) What about the student with no smartphone? A tool that requires a device can widen the gap it was meant to close. (iii) Is there any substitute for handling real apparatus? Simulated titration teaches the sequence; only a real burette teaches the hand.
Q2.
The Government of India has come out with a new set of National Awards in the field of Science, Technology, and Innovation known as ‘Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar’. The objective of the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar (RVP) is to recognise the notable and inspiring contribution made by the scientists, technologists, and innovators individually or in teams in various fields of science, technology, and technology-led innovation. 1. Vigyan Ratna (VR) award will recognise lifetime achievements and contributions made in any field of science and technology. 2. Vigyan Shri (VS) award will recognise distinguished contributions in any field of science and technology. 3. Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (VY-SSB) award will recognise and encourage young scientists up to the age of 45 years, who have made an exceptional contribution in any field of science and technology. 4. Vigyan Team (VT) award to be given to a team comprising three or more scientists/researchers/innovators, who have made an exceptional contribution working in a team in any field of science and technology.
Answer
AwardRecognisesWho is eligible
Vigyan Ratna (VR)Lifetime achievementAny field of science and technology; a whole career's work
Vigyan Shri (VS)Distinguished contributionsAny field of science and technology
Vigyan Yuva – Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (VY-SSB)Exceptional contribution by a young scientistUp to 45 years of age
Vigyan Team (VT)Exceptional contribution by a teamA team of three or more scientists, researchers or innovators
Read this beside Bibha Chowdhuri's life and two things stand out.
  • The Vigyan Ratna is the award she never had. She “never received any awards during her lifetime, but continued her work tirelessly”, and the honours came 28 years after her death. A lifetime-achievement award exists precisely so that a career of steady, unglamorous work — “decades of crucial research, from Kolar Gold Mines to the Physical Research Laboratory” — can be recognised while the scientist is alive to know it.
  • The Vigyan Team award corrects an old distortion. Prizes have traditionally gone to individuals, but Bibha's own field is the proof that they should not: the pi-meson work, the Kolar Gold Mines cosmic-ray experiments, the Mars Orbiter Mission and Chandrayaan-3 were all group achievements. As the article says, “Over 50 women contributed to Chandrayaan-3.” An award that can be given to a team is an admission that modern science is collective.
Find out and discuss: who Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar was (the founding director of CSIR, after whom India's best-known science prize is named); why the age limit of 45 exists; and whether you think a limit of that kind helps young researchers or overlooks those whose work is recognised late — as Bibha Chowdhuri's was.
Q3.
A glimpse of women pioneers from different fields. (Source: Women's Scientist Brochure)
Answer

The panel on this page places Bibha Chowdhuri in a line rather than leaving her alone — which is the article's whole method. Use it as the starting point for a class display: choose one woman, find three facts and one obstacle she overcame, and write four sentences.

PioneerFieldWhy she matters
Anandibai Joshi (1865–1887)MedicineOne of the first Indian women to earn a degree in Western medicine, in 1886, at nineteen — and she died at twenty-two.
Kamala Sohonie (1911–1998)BiochemistryThe first Indian woman to receive a Ph.D. in a scientific discipline; she had to fight to be admitted to the Indian Institute of Science at all.
Janaki Ammal (1897–1984)Botany, cytogeneticsWorked on sugarcane and plant chromosomes; a variety of magnolia is named after her.
Bibha Chowdhuri (1913–1991)PhysicsIndia's first woman physicist; cosmic rays and pi-mesons; the star ‘Bibha' in Leo.
Asima Chatterjee (1917–2006)Organic chemistryWorked on anti-epileptic and anti-malarial compounds from Indian medicinal plants; the first Indian woman to be awarded a Doctor of Science by an Indian university.
Kalpana Chawla (1962–2003)AerospaceThe first woman of Indian origin in space; died aboard the shuttle Columbia.
Tessy Thomas (b. 1963)Missile technologyThe ‘Missile Woman of India'; first woman to head a missile project in DRDO.
Ritu Karidhal SrivastavaSpace science‘Rocket Woman of India'; Mars Orbiter Mission, and Mission Director for Chandrayaan-3 — named in this very article.
The pattern to notice, and to discuss: read the dates. The obstacle changes with the decade but never disappears. For Anandibai Joshi it was permission to study at all; for Kamala Sohonie, admission to an institute that did not take women; for Bibha Chowdhuri, credit for work already done; for the women of ISRO today, it is leadership and visibility. That progression is exactly what the article means by “how far we've come—and how much further we have to go.”
Project suggestion: make a wall timeline from 1865 to today with one woman per decade. Under each name write, in one line, the door she opened. A timeline shows something a list cannot — that each of them made the next one's fight a slightly smaller one.
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